Inwardness and Morality (Value Inquiry Book Series 170)

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

VIBS Volume 170 Robert Ginsberg Founding Editor Peter A. Redpath Executive Editor Associate Editors G. John M. Abbarno Mary-Rose Barral Gerhold K. Becker Raymond Angelo Belliotti Kenneth A. Bryson C. Stephen Byrum H. G. Callaway Robert A. Delfino Rem B. Edwards Francesc Forn i Argimon William Gay Dane R. Gordon J. Everet Green Heta Aleksandra Gylling Matti Häyry

Steven V. Hicks Richard T. Hull Laura Duhan Kaplan Mark Letteri Vincent L. Luizzi Alan Milchman George David Miller Alan Rosenberg Arleen L. F. Salles John R. Shook Eddy Souffrant Tuija Takala Anne Waters John R. Welch Thomas F. Woods

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY Eric Wolf Fried

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2005

Cover Design: Studio Pollmann The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 90-420-1796-1 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2005 Printed in the Netherlands

To Joanna

This page intentionally left blank

CONTENTS Foreword by Paul C. Santilli

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction

1

ONE

Separateness 1. The World 2. The Body 3. Escapism 4. Solitariness 5. Alienation 6. Disengagement 7. “Primal State”

3 6 8 9 11 14 15 16

TWO

Privacy 1. Sensing Separateness 2. Continuity 3. Subjectivity 4. Agency 5. Limits 6. Bodily Sensations

19 20 21 28 29 31 35

THREE

Cohesiveness 1. Comparisons 2. Unity 3. Illustration

37 41 43 45

FOUR

Proportion 1. Benefits 2. Imbalance 3. Reciprocity

51 56 57 65

FIVE

Self-Knowledge 1. Freedom 2. Action 3. Complexity

75 80 82 86

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

viii SIX

Others 1. Precedence 2. Illustration 3. Sympathy

Conclusion Appendix

91 91 100 105 113

Reductionism, Personal Identity, and Morality in Parfit’s Reasons and Persons 1. Personal Experience 2. Activity 3. Constant Subjectivity 4. Commentators

115 119 121 124 127

Works Cited

133

About the Author

137

Index

139

FOREWORD In this beautifully composed book, Eric Fried reminds us of a truth both simple and profound, that “in inwardness, I am in myself.” In an age where intellectuals are fascinated with the unconscious drives, genetic materials, and linguistic structures that constitute the human, Fried dares to define our experience in terms of subjectivity, private self-awareness, and complex relationships between interiority and outwardness. There is an astonishing clarity and honesty about Fried’s investigation of the inner self. He offers brilliantly detailed psychological observations about a child awakening to her separateness from her parents and about a husband trying to understand the religious conversion of his beloved wife. Fried’s attention to the nuances of consciousness is eloquent and astute. Fried proposes a theoretical model for inwardness that he defends in a rigorous philosophical fashion, leading him to engage a host of historical and contemporary figures like Søren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Thomas Nagel and David Hamlyn. Specialists will be especially impressed with his critical discussion of Derek Parfit in chapter two and the Appendix, where he skillfully supplements his phenomenology with the conceptual tools of analytic philosophy. Against Parfit, Fried argues compellingly for the singular personality, robust agency, and moral responsibility of a self-enduring over time. There is much that is original in Fried’s theory of inwardness— especially in his basic distinctions between separateness and privacy, and in the emphasis he gives to bodily sensations, feeling limits, and sensing agency. At the same time, he draws upon and recalls past masters of subjectivity: Augustine of Hippo, René Descartes, Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Marcel Proust. Without inwardness, both in self and other, neither the beauties nor the catastrophes of human history would matter much. Every individual, whether kin or stranger, is worth caring about just because he or she has a distinct sense of self and is not merely an item in this world. By reading this book, we withdraw a bit from our absorption in everyday outward concerns and retreat to rediscover what is always with us: the awareness that we are uniquely ourselves, different from all others. Fried teaches that our inwardness need not confine us to narcissistic self-absorption, but may expand our capacity for richer, more sympathetic relations with others. Paul C. Santilli Professor of Philosophy Siena College, Loudonville, N.Y

This page intentionally left blank

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My debt to John Kekes is profound. I cannot imagine where—if anywhere— this work would be without the acumen and critical intelligence that he applied to it. I am grateful to Josiah Gould, Ron McClamrock, Paul C. Santilli, and Naomi Zack for their encouragement and helpful comments. Steven Schroeder, for the Value Inquiry Book Series, provided many suggestions that I gratefully adopted. I thank my daughter, Miriam Fried, whose computer skills and editorial assiduity and acuity were important in bringing the written work into usable format.

Modeh ani l’fanekha melekh chai v’kayom.... .

This page intentionally left blank

INTRODUCTION I offer this work as a contribution to morality, taking morality as understanding what it means to live a good life and to form a character for such a life. Inwardness is an important element of character, and important to how we live. Understanding inwardness leads to a better understanding of morality. The first three chapters describe inwardness. We can think of a person’s attention as having two general directions, inward and outward. These directions are states of mind, tendencies of thought and feeling. Inwardness has two aspects: separateness and privacy. Each aspect appears in a variety of forms. Forms of separateness include escapism, solitariness, alienation, disengagement, and some having to do with the body. The forms of privacy include personal identity, subjectivity, agency, limits, and bodily sensation. After describing separateness and privacy, I show how they are connected, and how inwardness is distinguishable from other states and tendencies of thought and feeling. I also show that we can only experience such forms of inwardness as subjectivity and agency as unities. The last three chapters consider the role of inwardness in a good life. The main moral importance of inwardness lies in what develops in its relation to attention to the world, or outwardness. When inwardness and outwardness are in balance, and reciprocally enhance each other, and when we can juxtapose them, they contribute to morally important attributes. The attributes I consider are self-knowledge, knowledge of others, sympathy, and intimacy. I establish the moral importance of inwardness by showing that inwardness is important for these attributes. Achieving balance, reciprocity, and juxtaposition between inwardness and outwardness do not guarantee that a life will be good. Inwardness and its relation to outwardness are not the whole of morality. The point is not that inwardness is always morally good, but that inwardness is morally important.

This page intentionally left blank

One SEPARATENESS Reductionism in different forms was prominent in philosophy in the last century. Philosophers questioned the reality of the self and the meaningfulness of speaking of it. Such programs consigned inwardness to the realm of nonsense. Jean-Paul Sartre argues, in The Transcendence of the Ego (1960; orig. 1937), that the ego is not the transcendental source of consciousness. Instead, the ego is transcendent, an object not different from other objects in the world. This would seem to deny the possibility of inwardness. The claim offers a glimpse of the moral implications of an absence of inwardness. Sartre adopts a radical version of the phenomenological tradition’s description of consciousness as intentional. Consciousness does not proceed from an ego, or self, but is defined by its objects. We have no awareness, apart from awareness of something in the world. The ego comes into experience only as posited by consciousness in retrospect, as an object among other objects in the world. The ego, then, is “transcendent,” as all objects in the world are transcendent; everything, including self, is an object, and only an object. Selfhood has no special status, requires no different direction for attention than does anything else in the world. Sartre illustrates: When I run after a streetcar . . . there is no I. There is consciousness of the streetcar-having-to-be-overtaken . . .. In fact, I am then plunged into the world of objects; it is they which constitute the unity of my consciousness; it is they which present themselves with values, with attractive and repellant [sic] qualities—but me, I have disappeared . . .. And this is not a matter of chance, due to a momentary lapse of attention, but happens because of the very structure of consciousness. (Ibid., pp. 48–49) Sartre’s language is inconsistent. “I run after a streetcar,” yet, he says, “there is no I . . ..” The absence of self is in “the very structure of consciousness,” yet “I” am plunged into the world of objects, and “I” disappear, which means “I” existed before the plunging, and there had to have been an “I” in order for it to disappear. More important than such inconsistencies (perhaps with more use of such awkward locutions as “the streetcar-having-to-be-overtaken,” Sartre could have rid himself of them) is that this description does not accord with experience. Experience has two poles. One pole is the subject, not as another object in the world, but as subject experiencing. The other pole is the object. The experience includes oneself chasing the streetcar, not the streetcar alone. The self

4

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

never entirely disappears, as Sartre claims. Experiences absolutely devoid of a sense of subjectivity, actions lacking any sense of agency, do not occur. Once we bring the subject/agent into the picture, we bring in many other relevant things. What is the context of chasing the streetcar? Why is the subject chasing it? To get where, see whom, meet what responsibility? In what physical condition and with what attendant bodily sensations does he or she do the chasing? All these are part of the experience, which is not just of the streetcar. If, as Sartre claims, consciousness emanates not from a personal “I,” but from a “Transcendental Field, purified of all egological structure” (ibid., p. 93), and is defined by its objects, the world-and-consciousness would be an uninterrupted, homogenized series of streetcars-having-to-be-overtaken. Under the conditions posed by Sartre, I can have no perspective on the world, no way to shape my life in relation to the world. Sartre is describing the moral pathology of attention to the world run amok. “Values” for whom? “Attractive and repellent” to whom? What makes objects attractive and repellent? Is Sartre a Platonist, with Forms of “Attractive” and “Repellent” out there, impersonally, in which objects participate? Sartre concludes his claim for the transcendence of the ego: “No more is needed in the way of a philosophical foundation for an ethics and a politics which are absolutely positive” (ibid., p. 106). I contend that with the disappearance of the “I,” no ground exists for thinking about the goodness of a life. Of what would a life consist in the absence of a self around which it could cohere? Could we then conceive of the world as the field for living a good life, for growing and making choices? With such unrelieved attention to the world, could there be any ethics at all? A reply might be that Sartre is not claiming that there is no I, no self, subject, agent, only that there is no self from which consciousness proceeds. Consciousness, the “Transcendental Field purified of all egological structures,” posits subjectivity and the self as it does any object in the world. We construct the self in retrospect not differently from other objects. This makes room for the experiences cited, the streetcar-chaser’s motives, and bodily sensations, for instance, and for a person for whom things may be attractive or repellent, and for the analyses of situations that Sartre presents in his subsequent work. If this is Sartre’s intent, his example of chasing the streetcar is misleading. In that example, no I, posited or otherwise, is experienced. Leaving that point aside, an initial response to this defense of Sartre is an impressionistic appeal to experience. In chasing a streetcar, or in any other activity, we do not sense subjectivity in the same way that we perceive objects in the world. My choice of words suggests the difference: we sense subjectivity while we perceive objects in the world. In its immediacy, we sense the subjective pole inarticulately, amorphously, as dark and dense. Subjectivity is always behind, never out in front. Whenever I turn to analyze it, it slips away, turning from subject to object, the subjectivity itself lost. When I try to sneak up on it or

Separateness

5

catch it unawares, it moves just as stealthily, just as swiftly, to circle out of the way, to stay behind the eye, and avoid my catching it “out there.” The objective pole, in contrast, is out there. I can point at it, or put my finger on it, literally or figuratively. John McDowell notes a related difference between inwardness and outwardness. He cites: the continuity of “consciousness,” . . . what appears to be knowledge of an identity, the persistence of the same subject through time, without any need to take care that attention stays fixed on the same thing. Contrast keeping one’s thought focused on an ordinary object of perception over a period; this requires a skill, the ability to keep track of something . . .. (1997, p. 232) The elusiveness of subjectivity might seem inconsistent with the effortless continuity of subjectivity that McDowell describes. Subjectivity as subjective is, as McDowell says, continuously present. It only proves frustrating and difficult when we try to make it, as subjective, into an object. Objects in the world are not elusive in this way. Attention to one or a set of them is difficult because they are manifold. They parade, many of them at once, replacing each other, always changing, before our eyes and ears. In contrast, my subjectivity, however elusive to pin down as an object, is always here. The Sartrean reply might still be that impersonal consciousness posits all that, the differences between how we experience self and how we experience objects in the world. In this way, whenever an objection is raised to Sartre’s claim, Sartre can raise another metaphysical counter to refute it: “Yes, but whatever your objection is based on, that too is posited.” This turns Sartre’s thesis into a metaphysical curio affording no morally important distinctions. The thesis that we posit everything, all experience, retrospectively, offers no basis for making distinctions among experiences. It does not rule out such distinctions, but it cannot make them. If the distinctions are morally important, the thesis is irrelevant to morality. Sartre’s final assertion, that he is offering all the foundation needed for morality, is false. Agreement or disagreement with his metaphysics does not matter. The metaphysics homogenizes experiences, instead of facilitating needed distinctions. For morality, we must go to our experiences instead of to such metaphysical claims. Sartre’s conclusion, “[n]o more is needed in the way of a philosophical foundation for an ethics and a politics which are absolutely positive” (ibid., p. 106), remains egregious. If he is denying the possibility of inwardness, the claim could be morally important. This is an untenable position. If he is not denying the possibility of inwardness, but only arguing that inwardness is posited in retrospect along with everything else in the world, he is offering up a morally irrelevant curio. If we concentrate on Sartre’s final

6

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

word, “positive,” only knowledge available to science remains. We reduce morality at best to sociology—no morality at all. This, no morality at all, is the direction toward which all reductionisms tend. Are distinctions among kinds of experiences morally important? If they are, which experiences and which distinctions are the important ones? As will be shown in the course of the present work, the distinction in experience between inwardness and outwardness (posited after the fact or not) is needed as part of a foundation for ethics. Sartre’s early essay on the ego is hardly the only reductionist argument advanced in the last century. Ludwig Wittgenstein with creditable pathos and the logical positivists triumphantly declared statements about “self,” ethics, and such, nonsensical. Wittgenstein writes, “there is no such thing as the soul—the subject, etc.” (1922, 5.5421); “there can be no ethical propositions” (ibid., 6.42); “It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed” (ibid., 6.421); and, “Of the will as the subject of the ethical we cannot speak” (ibid., 6.423). Rudolf Carnap does not deny the reality of the self as Sartre appears to do on one interpretation. Instead, he denies the sense of asserting the reality or unreality of anything, including other minds. He consigns it all to “metaphysics.” Normative ethics is “a pretended investigation . . .. [V]alue statements themselves . . . are not propositions . . . and have no theoretical sense. Therefore we assign them to the realm of metaphysics” (1963, pp. 21–25). For a logical positivist such as Carnap, no worse fate can befall a philosophical claim than to be labeled metaphysics. “The danger lies in the deceptive character of metaphysics; it gives the illusion of knowledge without actually giving any knowledge” (ibid., p. 31). Derek Parfit offers another reductionist program. I address it in chapter two and in the Appendix. I cite reductionism at the outset, as a contrast to what follows. Inwardness is inconceivable in or irrelevant to reductionist schemes. I want to take issue not merely as a matter of finding a weakness by which a reductionist claim fails. I want to show how wrong such claims are, and show that morality cannot be understood in reductionist terms. I will do this by describing inwardness and by demonstrating its moral importance. 1. The World Inwardness has two forms: separateness and privacy. Separateness provides a relatively easy entry to the topic of inwardness. Separateness is the state of mind that is the opposite of, a shrinking from, being engaged by the world. We know in general what “the world,” and what engagement in the world means. We can understand separateness as what is not related to the world, or is related only as a withdrawal. The following examples and discussion will clarify what I mean by “the world,” and by separating from it.

Separateness

7

A hunter pursuing quarry is an instance of engagement in the world. The hunter strives for a particular worldly end. Success or failure depends on an external test, that of taking the quarry, which depends in turn on a set of skills for dealing with the world. The world’s contingencies also affect the outcome, in that the quarry may or may not be where the hunter can find it, for reasons having little to do with hunting skill. While keeping in mind and striving for the goal, as part of that striving, the hunter is alert to immediate circumstances, and quick to note any sight or sound indicative of the target, whether of the animal itself or signs of it. The hunter is attentive to the terrain and vegetation that present varying probabilities of the quarry’s presence and obstacles to human movement. The hunter must know where he or she is, and where heading. If other people are involved, the hunter is alert to them, to their roles in the hunt, and to the possibilities of their aiding or hindering it. When the time comes, the hunter must shoot quickly, but must also make sure other people are not in the line of fire. The hunter must also make sure that when others fire, he or she is not endangered by them. We can contrast this hunter’s attention to the world with an instance of nascent separateness: A little girl sits at night at a table in her family’s summer cottage, playing cards with her mother and father. The walls are uninsulated; night sounds of crickets, katydids, and frogs invade the room. The light emanates from a single lamp, which barely penetrates the corners of the room, and throws her parents’ faces into exaggerated relief. Whenever anyone moves, large shadows sweep across the walls. The feeling creeps over the child that her parents’ faces are masks, that they are strangers to her. They could be robots, puppets, or impostors. She finds herself alone, as never before. These people, supposedly her parents, are strangers, and in their strangeness, the world turns hostile to the child. This discovery of separateness from other people is a child’s experience. The girl suddenly perceives those with whom she has previously shared unquestioned attachment as inaccessible and hidden. At the same time, she recognizes the separateness of her thoughts. If her parents are strangers, she can hardly go to them with her distress that they are strangers. She is left to her own counsel; this is a lesson in growing up. She hides her thoughts from them. A person’s thoughts are hers, and she does not share them unless she chooses to. The same is true of others toward her. She can hold back thoughts. She can determine which of them she wishes to reveal or express. Once separateness is recognized, concealment and deception become possible. She can lead people astray about what she is thinking. Others can do the same to her. Separateness from the world is a diminution of the attributes of the hunter. It may occur in different forms. Common to all the forms is the direction of my attention. In the way of the child in the summer cottage, I may distrust or flee the world. To varying degrees and at different times I may minimize attention to, and activity in, the world. I may be alienated, generally,

8

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

from other people. I may not care about ends in the world. I may not care to test myself in the world. I may be absent-minded about my immediate circumstances—either at some times or as a general attitude. Other people may seem inaccessible or irrelevant. I may avoid situations in which I endanger others or in which others endanger me. Many degrees of such detachments and avoidances, alertnesses and commitments, are possible. The detachments, avoidances, alertnesses, and commitments may be mixed together. For instance, I may be committed to and depend on other people, but be vague about my immediate physical surroundings. These limitations in attention to the world, these instances of separateness, if they form a consistent pattern, are aspects of character. People have different degrees of engagement in the world. An individual also tends to engage more at some times than at others. Although the tendency to separateness may form a fairly permanent and indelible pattern, manifestations of separateness, as part of that pattern, will vary in response to circumstances. Those circumstances include, beside our surroundings, our physical and emotional states, such as exhaustion, satiety, frustration, fear, anxiety, disappointment, joy, victory, defeat. Separateness takes different forms. I will describe some of them, not to catalog them all, but to make my claims concrete. These include forms having to do with the body, escapism, solitariness, alienation, and disengagement. I will conclude this chapter by contrasting two perspectives on separateness. The descriptions of the forms of separateness emphasize the negative movement of attention: away from the world. The other perspective is that we can start apart, in separateness, and move toward the world. 2. The Body Some forms of separateness have to do with the body. I experience the world through my senses. To varying degrees, at different times, I can shut down my senses, and cut the world off. I may clench my eyes, cover my ears, hold my nose, and so reduce the flow of impressions from the world. I can seek refuge in a dark, quiet room. I can get away from it all. Sleep is a temporary, physiological exclusion of the world. The need for sleep is emblematic of the fact that we cannot be engaged in the world all the time. People have different tolerances for extended, intense engagement. Eventually we become fatigued or drowsy, and a curtain descends between us and the world. The longer engagement lasts, the greater the fatigue or drowsiness, the more we have to strain to stay engaged, and the thicker the curtain gets. The way to clear it away is through sleep, rest, relaxation—temporary withdrawals from the world. Not only is constant, intense engagement impossible, but to maintain engagement we must renew it by withdrawal.

Separateness

9

Physical pleasure and pain caused by objects in the world may help to focus attention on those objects. Pleasure and pain impel a creature to seek things in the world that promote survival and reproduction, and to avoid things that promote death and infertility. In either case, they focus attention on objects in the world. But if intense enough, pleasure and pain deter attention from the world, first from objects other than the one causing the pleasure or pain, and then, possibly, from the cause itself. The pleasure or pain, as almost pure sensation, takes over a person’s attention. In this way, physical pleasure and pain can be barriers. 3. Escapism Another form of separateness is escapism. The Random House Dictionary of the English Language (Flexner, 1987) defines escapism as “the avoidance of reality by absorption of the mind in entertainment or in an imaginative situation, activity, etc.” A person indulges in fantasies and daydreams, plays games, sees films, watches television, plays video games, uses pornography, reads romances or mysteries, roots for a team in sports. An individual may create fantasies, or fantasies may be mass-produced, commercial products. All fantasies have in common the avoidance or falsification of the world. We cannot count some activities simply as either avoidance of the world or attention to it. Much depends on the context and the use made of the activity. A book may be escapist for one person, but contribute to attention to the world for another. It may be escapist during the reading, yet, later on, for the same reader, contribute to attention to the world. Despite these nuances, we can evince a broad outline of the difference between escapism and attention to the world. Imagine a pair of siblings whose parents leave a substantial inheritance. The sister uses some of her inheritance to go to medical school. When she completes her training, she joins the Peace Corps and practices medicine from dawn to dusk in an impoverished third world country. Following the Peace Corps, she joins an international doctors’ organization that sends her all over the world to tend to health emergencies caused by war, infection, famine, natural disaster. After a decade abroad, she returns to the United States and becomes the director of an inner-city clinic, marries and has children. She works long hours at the clinic, and then spends several hours each evening with her husband and children. After they are asleep, if not interrupted by an emergency call, she spends several more hours keeping up with the medical literature. She becomes an officer in her state’s medical society. She participates in blue-ribbon panels on medicine, public health, and public policy. She is also active in her children’s schools and in organizations, such as sports leagues, which her children join.

10

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

The doctor’s brother calculates that, with the money he has inherited, he can live in frugal comfort without having to work. He sets himself up in an apartment with a cable television and videocassette player. He watches sports, soap operas, dramas, television movies, and movies he rents from a video store. When he feels a need for sex, he dials a “900” number, rents an x-rated video, or buys a pornographic magazine. He lives out his life, mostly indoors, by himself. Opinions may differ about what is real life, what is fantasy. The doctor may be a deluded Quixote. The television-watcher could be deriving deep truths from his soap operas. Attention to the world is not always benevolent, as it would seem to be in the life of the sister. A Tamburlaine obsessed with conquest, who plunders and spreads destruction, for whom the finest thing is to ride in triumph through Persepolis, is also strenuously attentive to the world. Despite such possibilities, the difference between escapism and attention to the world, especially at the extremes represented by the siblings, is plain and firm enough. In his games and fantasies, the escapist has little at risk beyond the sensations of the moment. Nothing rides on them. They require little effort on his part. Outcomes, if any exist in any serious sense, do not depend on his activity. Between these extremes is room for variations and combinations. Escapism makes use of fragments from the world, enlarging on them in easy, sensational, formulaic, clichéd, or sentimental ways. Murders occur in the world. Most people who read murder mysteries do not encounter actual murders. A murder in a book elicits a formulaic response. The book’s characters are unreal, but they are recognizable imitations of people. They move among imagined things and places with recognizable references to things and places in the world. Absorption in a murder mystery is an escape from the realities of life, from objects among which we live and with which we deal, but with some reference to them. The boundary between escapism and engagement is not always clear. A mystery novel may go beyond escapism if it includes deeper characterizations, presents a perspective on the world, or has aesthetic value. The best art and writing brings our attention back to the world, providing new ways to see the world. But even the best art and writing may facilitate escapism. Is sports escapism or engagement? Participating in a sport (as opposed to being a fan) requires many of the attributes of the hunter described as an instance of engagement. Politics involves engagement in the world, and is about real matters, but it also has escapist elements. Many follow politics much as fans follow sports, rooting for a side but expending no effort, having no influence, and neither expecting nor wanting much influence on the course of public affairs. Escapism may also be mixed with engagement in a different way: sometimes people come together in their interest in escapist material. At work, for instance, they may share their opinions of the latest episode in a

Separateness

11

television serial or sports event. Rooting for a team may unite a parent and child. Members of different generations in a family may play a board game or cards together. Mass production and distribution of escapist materials make escapism easier. Prosperity and security make it possible for more people to indulge in it more often without threatening their livelihood. Escapism may be more prevalent now, in comparatively wealthy societies, than in the past. On the other hand, popular religion, royal processions, storytellers, and bards once provided opportunities for escapism. Finally, we should not equate relaxation and leisure with escapism. Relaxation is a surrender, for a time, of striving. We may occupy the resulting leisure by escapism. Escapism may be relaxing, but we may employ relaxation otherwise. We can use the release from exigencies to refocus and gain perspective on the world and on our place in it. 4. Solitariness Another form of separateness, solitariness, is a withdrawal from people. The hunter, alert and attuned to the world, can hunt in solitude. The social element of hunting, companions in the hunt, landowners on whose property the hunt takes place, bystanders in the vicinity, can be eliminated, and the hunter may still be connected to and suffused by the world—the natural world. In solitude, I may be attentive to the world, yet be apart from other people. When, as with the hunter, this form of separateness lacks a feeling of deprivation, it might be termed “solitude.” When marked by deprivation, we might call it “isolation.” “Solitariness” is a general term including both. An element of solitariness, noted with the child in her parents’ summer cottage, is the inaccessibility of others’ thoughts and feelings. I recognize the separateness of others, and my separateness from them. Recognition of separateness, that I am “in here,” the world is “out there,” allows me to see that others are “in there,” that they are not all they seem on the surface. What is presented are masks that may or may not communicate the reality behind them. Others’ accessibility depends on their willingness to drop their masks. I cannot know how much I know of another; an accurate idea of how much the other hides behind the mask is not guaranteed. To feel myself among masks is often to feel separate and solitary. Søren Kierkegaard, in Fear and Trembling, meditates on the biblical Abraham. He wants to find a reliable contemporary equivalent of what he calls a knight of faith. The one he posits is absolutely unrecognizable as such to the world; he looks like a tax collector or “the grocer over the way vegetating in the twilight,” yet he “does not do the least thing except by virtue of the absurd,” and “every instant is making the movements of infinity” (1953, pp. 49–51). This modern knight of faith is an extreme instance of a divorce be-

12

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

tween others’ appearances and their reality. Everything is behind the mask, in the other’s inwardness. With hiddenness such as Kierkegaard conceives, communication is almost impossible. Every means of communicating may be a means to hide, and we cannot tell which is which. In such circumstances, a human relation is only marginally less strenuous than a relation to God. The child in the summer cottage suddenly is solitary, indeed isolated. Her discovery of her separateness constitutes a significant part of her separateness and of its fruition in solitariness. All along, the potential for separateness was there. She was separate from what she perceived, and separate in having her perceptions to herself, but that separateness did not attain to a state of mind until she became solitary. Separateness becomes a state of mind in the awareness of oneself in that condition. The inaccessibility of what others are thinking is part of the experience of solitariness. This inaccessibility has two aspects, the awareness of which overwhelms the child. One aspect is that others’ experience is different from hers. The other is the potential for secrecy, hers, or another’s. Thomas Nagel shows that experience cannot be divorced from the point of view of its subject (1979, pp. 165–180). What being another subject is like is impossible to know if that subject is different, as a bat or as a “Martian” is different from us. (Or a bee: Emily Dickinson describes a bee, and exclaims, “Oh, for a Bee’s experience/ Of Clovers and of Noon!” (1960, p. 432).) Nor can we ascertain how things are for a bat—the bat’s experience—by means of reduction to the physical. The mind-body, or the mind-brain problem is intractable like no other. Experience is always lost in the reduction, a point noted by Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz in The Monadology: [P]erception and that which depends on it are inexplicable by mechanical causes, that is, by figures and motions. And, supposing that there were a machine so constructed as to think, feel and have perception, we could conceive of it as enlarged and yet preserving the same proportions, so that we might enter it as into a mill. And this granted, we should only find on visiting it, pieces which push one against another, but never anything by which to explain a perception. (1951, par. 17) Lie detectors or other technologies do not overcome the inaccessibility of another’s experience. Measuring physical events indirectly indicates that an experience is occurring. In the future we may be able to determine the kind of perception a subject is having (whether the subject is listening to sounds, seeing colors, thinking abstractly) by the location(s) activated in the brain. Even this would not share the experience. The measurement remains external. An observer could share a subject’s experience directly only at the cost of the observer being subsumed in the identity of the subject, thereby losing his or

Separateness

13

her identity. In this way, the inaccessibility of others’ experience is a necessary condition of experience, not one contingent on the state of technology. For Nagel, knowing what another subject experiences is a matter of degree. He addresses differences among species, genera, and orders of animals. Although I cannot know what being a bat is like, he assumes that I can know what being another human being is like. He may assume too much. If I can identify what all human beings share, to that extent I know what being any human being is like. But human beings are complex and varied. Each individual has particular experiences. They may or may not be willing and able to share their experiences. I do not know what they share, withhold, or distort. This points to another aspect of inaccessibility, the potential for secrecy. People can to varying degrees share experiences when they communicate them and re-create them for others. Painters, sculptors, poets, novelists, essayists, musicians do this all the time, although not perfectly. The ability to re-create experience for others is essential in the arts. This re-created experience is different from actually having another’s experience and so losing mine. The re-creation is mediated by the work of art or by the act of communication, which allows me to transform and integrate it into my store of past experience, according to my perspective. If we can communicate, we can also withhold or falsify communication. The same distancing mediation that makes communication possible also makes secrecy possible. The child sees that her parents can withhold secrets from her. They may even have the secret that they are demons or robots. In her panic, she may lose sight of their humanity. The possibilities of secrecy and otherness flood in. Because they can have secrets, she cannot be sure they are not Martians or vampires. Reserve is a “softer” form of solitariness. I have used Kierkegaard’s knight of faith as an example of a wearer of a mask because, to anyone outside him, he is simply a tax collector or grocer, and not recognized as a knight of faith. The knight of faith is reserved: a great deal is going on behind the mask that, without any intent to deceive, he does not reveal. We may be reserved by being socially discreet. In such cases, separateness consists in not being naively subsumed into our social encounters. We understand that others are different. Their perspectives and assumptions may not be the same as ours. Communication may be possible, but we are tentative about it. We listen and watch, and are delicate about what may or may not be appropriate. We may be aware of our unfamiliarity with a social context or with the people in it, and so we wait until we are more confident that we understand the signals. Or we may be profoundly reserved in living a great deal of life in ways that are not visible to others, as does the knight of faith. Or we may be reserved in some situations—say at work—and not in others—say at home, with family. Some young children, voluble at home, will not utter a word in nursery school.

14

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY 5. Alienation

Alienation is another form of separateness. With masks, others are undiscoverable. I cannot assume that others find me discoverable. When I suspect that malice or intentional deception lies behind a mask, as the child fears, separateness takes the form of alienation. I may be alienated when my situation is hostile, intolerable, out of my control, or if I am disgusted with my surroundings. Alienation is a major literary theme of the past century and a half. In T. S. Eliot’s early poems, for instance, alienation often takes the form of disgust for the world, for other people, and for oneself as a physical being. The characteristic ambiance is the empty, dirty, trashy, sawdusty city street at night, under insidious fog, smoke, rain. People live in rented rooms and one-night cheap hotels. Bed is neither rest nor refuge. Favorite adjectives for the world, the body, and the soul are “grimy,” “dingy,” “sordid,” “soiled.” Odors of tobacco and stale beer pervade. Otherwise pleasant odors, such as of steak, are given contexts that make them distasteful. Anything gentle or heroic belongs to a distant age and country. Characteristic life stages are tired, worn out, timid, etiolated middle and old age. Hysteria hovers nearby. Social contacts are sordid among the poor, and trivial, nervous, and dull among the better off. The alienation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s underground man becomes a spiteful, isolated incapacity for and hatred of life itself. He wonders whether he should have undertaken to tell his story: After all, to tell long stories, for example, showing how I have ruined my life by morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from reality, and vainglorious spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits of an anti-hero are expressly gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less. We are so far divorced from it that we immediately feel a sort of loathing for actual “real life,” and so cannot even stand to be reminded of it. After all, we have reached the point of almost looking at actual “real life” as an effort, almost as hard work, and we are all privately agreed that it is better in books. (1960, p. 114) The forms of separateness may have favorable, neutral, or unfavorable connotations. Usually the assumption is that alienation, as represented by Eliot and Dostoevsky, is not a good state of mind. But alienation may be an appropriate reaction to a hostile environment. James Joyce, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, expresses the alienation of Stephen Dedalus, the young potential artist, as a set of tactics by which the artist can protect himself:

Separateness

15

You have asked me [Stephen says to his interlocutor, Cranly] what I would do and what I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile, and cunning . . .. You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. (1956, p. 247) If an adolescent’s peers have a destructive influence on him, then the adolescent should be alienated from them. Other forms of separateness may also be favorable or unfavorable, depending on circumstances. We are likely to view escapism as a way of life unfavorably but few will object to a retreat into escapism for a while at the end of an exacting day. 6. Disengagement In the forms of separateness already described, such as solitariness, people shrink mainly from the social realm. But some who withdraw from people are the more engaged in religion or nature. From their writings, religious mystics, and nature mystics such as John Muir, are most engaged in the world, or believe themselves to be, when they are away from people. A general disengagement from the world goes beyond this social withdrawal. People may develop their character and construct lives that minimize their vulnerability to the world’s contingencies, social or otherwise. They make a fortress of themselves and give as few hostages to fate as possible. Instead of extending themselves, they hoard and build against possible harm. If family and friends increase their vulnerability because they can cause harm, or if a friend's suffering is contagious, or if a family member is tedious or a waste of time and energy, they decline to have family and friends, or they limit their commitments to them. They minimize risks in general, and do not define success in the world's terms, to avoid loss, disappointment, or harm. They keep the world out there, beyond the walls. In a less overtly defensive stance, people may learn to see the world as a mechanism, or to see objects in the world as instrumental, without caring about them. They are emotionally disengaged, while functioning in the world. They withhold concern from the world. (This is different from disengagement as seeing something as it is, apart from a personal perspective and caring— what is often meant by “objectivity.”) Charles Taylor writes:

16

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY The subject of disengagement and rational control has become a familiar modern figure . . .. The key to this figure is that it gains control through disengagement. Disengagement is always correlative of an “objectification.” . . . Objectifying a given domain involves depriving it of its normative force for us. (1989, p. 160)

The seeming paradox of objectification as a form of separateness from the world of objects suggests the complexity of separateness. Here, I offer a variant of disengagement: the world and its objects are deprived of their affective force, more than of their normative force. People may function in the world, but efficiently, with minimal caring. Immanuel Kant’s ideal of the autonomous agent, living for the moral law, unaffected by heteronomous inclinations and desires, would exhibit separateness in this sense. An absence of caring is combined with a maximum of, in this case, “moral” functioning. In a still more general disengagement, people may feel distant from, and vague about the world. They minimize both caring and functioning. The world out there just seems far away. Things do not matter much, or are unrelated to them. They feel ineffectual or irrelevant to influencing the course of events. Their limbs, as it were, are too heavy to lift in order to act, but if they did have the strength, the world would not be worth the effort. Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov’s Oblomov is a fully developed portrait of such a person (1859). People may also be distant in one situation but not in another, or distant in one situation because they are preoccupied with another. 7. “Primal State” These are some recognizable forms of separateness. In describing them, we have understood separateness as a negation of or withdrawal from a relation to the world. A different perspective on separateness is the converse of this negation. The presupposition of separateness as a negation is that the “primal state” is engagement, from which I withdraw. But separateness may be my primal state, from which I must actively reach toward and engage the world. In such a view, for instance, the question would not be what keeps Hamlet from avenging his father (Oedipal issues? the requirement that the play last five acts? less clichéd interpretations of Hamlet’s character or of the play?), but what brings him from a state of separateness to activity in the world. The notion of separateness as a primal state may be open to challenge, in that a person does not develop and cannot exist outside of a context in the world. But the notion of separateness as primal is not intended here as that primal. My point is not that a person appears, full-grown and armed like Athena, in splendid isolation without antecedent situations. Separateness is not an ontological condition, but a state of mind, a tendency of thought or

Separateness

17

feeling. Nor would the primacy of separateness be developmental; I do not argue that a child begins life separate. I argue that people may return “now,” naturally or habitually, to separateness, whenever they relax their effort toward the world. Such a return is not necessarily in reaction to or against the world. I do not postulate any particular way in which an individual reached the current state of development. David Hamlyn discusses the need for a social context in order to develop self-knowledge. His discussion applies as well to separateness. Citing “Wittgenstein’s point that one could not gain an understanding of, say, pain simply by considering the sensation that one is now having,” Hamlyn acknowledges, “[a] public, social context is presupposed in the understanding of any given concept . . .. The act of a hermit, therefore, in removing himself from society is clearly in one sense a social act . . .” (1983, p. 257). He concludes: The fact that self-knowledge, along with other knowledge, presupposes relationships with others, is not to be taken as implying that what one knows must be set out in terms of those relationships, even if some, perhaps much, of what one may come to know about oneself may be construable in those terms. To suppose that would be to confuse the conditions for a kind of knowledge with its content. (Ibid., p. 258) Separateness may well have social conditions for its development. This is so even when a current “resting” or “primal” state is separateness from which a person must reach toward the world. To deny the separateness of separateness because social conditions exist for its development, would be, as Hamlyn says, to confuse the conditions for that state of mind with its content. We can view engagement as the starting point from which people withdraw, the world as the context from which people separate themselves. We can also conceive of separateness as the starting point from which people make the effort to engage the world, a rest state to which they return whenever their exertion toward the world ceases. One or the other may be primary, depending on the person. In some, the two starting points may coexist, or they may alternate. In others, the two may be inversely correlated. Conceiving of two possibilities and of different combinations of them has advantages. The result is to correct the notion of fixed, absolute “places” and to avoid overly literal applications of spatial metaphors for inner life. We must recognize a dynamic of varying degrees of separateness and engagement, and varying starting points. Not a fixed place, but the degrees, their variations, and the dynamics of separateness and engagement form an aspect of a person’s character. The dynamic constitutes the relatively stable pattern for that person. I have so far described instances and forms of separateness. Separateness is also a more general pattern of thought and feeling. A person may become

18

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

aware of separateness in particular situations, as the child does in the summer cottage when her parents’ faces turn to masks. Separateness to varying degrees may also become an enduring pattern in an awareness of oneself as a separate being. A person may, for instance, brood over his isolation or exult in his alienation. We still might object that separateness is illusory because a mind could not exist without something in it. I must have content derived from the world, to occupy my thought and feeling. That my mind can be entirely unoccupied, or that I can have no thoughts is unlikely, and so I cannot be entirely separate. Separateness per se is conceivable, but only in a pathological state, occupied solely in shrinking or fleeing from everything. A person must have thoughts, but the thoughts need not be of the world. This work started with separateness because we know in general what “the world” means. To understand separateness as what is not related to the world, or withdrawal from the world is not difficult. Separateness is a convenient first stage for exposition. But only as an artifice of the presentation could inwardness appear as an unlikely contentless negation. Inwardness, to varying degrees, involves negation, and to varying degrees also has content, as will be discussed in the next chapter, under the heading of Privacy. I make no claim for the goodness or badness of separateness (or for inwardness) per se. The point is that inwardness is morally important, not that it must be morally good. Separateness is important because it provides us with a degree of independence from immediate circumstances. If those circumstances would impel us to a bad life, separateness is desirable. If, on the other hand, the circumstances would support a good life (good friends, traditions, institutions, for example), separateness from them, especially in alienation, may not be desirable. But the role of inwardness in the goodness of a life needs to be developed more fully than this.

Two PRIVACY The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology notes the following synonyms for “privacy” and “private” used over the centuries: a private matter, secret, seclusion, distinctive, set apart, apart from public life, belonging to an individual, one’s own, single, individual, apart from the rest (Barnhart, 1995). In some of these uses, privacy seems close to separateness, as a negation of attention to the world. These uses were discussed in chapter one. Other uses imply, more positively, that we have experiences apart from the world. I address these now. In privacy as an aspect of inwardness, we have something apart from the world to be private about. First, I will deal with one potential source of confusion. We often view privacy in a legal context, as having to do with the protection of the individual against the intrusions of government and society. In the present context, privacy has to do with an individual’s experience and the direction of an individual’s attention. It does not involve the relation of the individual to government and society. In a way, all thoughts and feelings, all experiences, are inward. Issues of “the unconscious” aside, they are accessible to the person thinking or feeling them, but inaccessible to others until that person expresses them. In this sense, all thoughts are within the thinker, experiences within the subject, and so we could count all thoughts and experiences as inward. Since all human beings think, feel, and have experiences, this would mean that all human beings are equally inward. We could make no moral distinctions among people or their lives based on inwardness. To draw the distinction within thought and feeling, according to the direction of a person’s attention, is more useful: does a person direct thoughts and feelings inward or outward? The direction of people’s attention does vary. Individual differences arise that we can examine. Can we direct attention inward? Stuart Hampshire, in discussing the relation of thought to action, says action is done at will and makes some change in the external world. Since action is in the external world, it involves the possibility of failure. The external world is that domain, “which is considered most important and valuable, the most in need of encouragement or prohibition” (1959, p. 156). A thought, for Hampshire, is an “inner process,” that must issue in the world, as either an action or a judgment (which is an uttered belief). “Thought is necessarily directed outwards towards action or judgment or both” (ibid., p. 158). He underlines this claim by insisting on the shadowiness of thoughts that do not issue in action or judgment, that are not made public (ibid., pp.

20

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

159–165). “Thought cannot be thought, as opposed to daydreaming or musing, unless it is directed towards a conclusion, whether in action or in judgment” (ibid., p. 159). Mental activity, what goes through a mind, is either purposive, outer-directed thought, or mere daydreams, musings, vague velleities, idle hopes. Our notion of thought (and feeling) should be broader, and looser: thought (or feeling) is whatever goes through the mind. The difference with Hampshire might seem a matter of arbitrary definition. The difference is substantive in that according to Hampshire, mental activity is wholly divided between purposive, action-directed thoughts on the one hand, and vague velleities on the other. This leaves little room for privacy, or thought directed to inner content. What Hampshire leaves out is significant. Mental activity includes more than purposive thoughts directed at action (or judgment), and idle musings. The forms of privacy described below fall in neither category. They involve thought or experience that does not issue in action or judgment in the world—not in the immediate relation of particular thoughts to particular actions that Hampshire envisions. Such privacy, far from idle musing, is morally important. If the boundary between inward and outward is found within the broad category of thought and feeling, according to the direction of our attention, useful distinctions are possible. The question is what is the content of the thoughts and feelings, beyond a negation of the world in separateness, when we direct attention away from the world? In this chapter, I will describe several significant forms of such privacy. Although not a complete catalog, these examples are sufficient to support my case. The forms include sensing the following: separateness; continuity of personal identity; subjectivity; agency; limits; bodily sensation. With the exception of sensing continuity, the discussion of which sets the stage for much of the rest, my approach will be to discuss these forms as they are experienced instead of as independent realities. These experiences are private: they may occupy thoughts and feelings when attention is away from the world. 1. Sensing Separateness One form of privacy is sensing separateness. Sensing separateness involves positive content for thought when I direct attention away from the world. Separateness is a form of privacy when I am conscious of my separateness. Separateness is a withdrawal from, a negation of attention to the world. As such, separateness is not yet a form of privacy. It becomes so when I sense my separateness and am aware of myself as a separate being. Such awareness of myself as a separate being is unlikely to be an undiluted withdrawal of attention from the world. If I am aware of myself as separate, I am likely to be aware of myself as separate from something. My awareness can be dominated

Privacy

21

by my separateness as a general state, in contrast to awareness of objects from which I feel separate. The child in the summer cottage all along was to some degree separate in the negative sense. Her separateness takes on positive content and becomes a form of privacy, beyond mere distance from other people and the world, when she discovers her separateness. Her separateness reaches its fruition in this discovery, which then becomes a significant element of her separateness, in solitariness and isolation. It also takes her into the realm of privacy, because she senses herself as a separate being. The child’s separateness is different from that of the escapist heir (previously contrasted with his doctor-sister). We can imagine the escapist as living out his life among the materials that obscure the world to him, without his being especially aware that he is submerged in escapism. He may simply be doing what feels natural, comfortable, and pleasurable. He is separate but not private. In contrast, the narrator in René Descartes’s Meditations who supposes a malevolent deceiver (1988), Fyodor Dostoevsky’s underground man (1960), Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus (1956), are like the child in being aware of their separateness, of themselves as having a problematic relation to the world. They sense themselves as separate, and so experience a form of privacy. 2. Continuity Sensing the continuity of my personal identity is a form of privacy. I experience continuity with what I was and will be. The child in the summer cottage grows old. She recalls her childhood discovery of her separateness. She has no doubt that she is continuous with the child, that she is in some sense the same person. She experiences this continuity despite all the changes that have occurred over the decades, changes that would have rendered her unrecognizable to an external observer who had not tracked her through the years. The continuity is not with the child as perceived from the outside, but as subject. She knows herself from inside to be the child, to be continuous with her. The child’s experience is hers as an adult; she experiences it now as such. The old woman can examine two aspects of the memory of her discovery of her separateness. One is of the objects of the experience “out there”: her parents, the ambiance of the cottage, the lighting, the summer night sounds, as she had perceived them. The other aspect is of the subject from within: herself frightened, separated, watching them. Of the two, the memory of that child-subject in her subjectivity is the more vivid. She relives those feelings, the sense of being “in here,” looking out through the child’s eyes (the same eyes as hers now), knowing her fear and her sense of her separateness. (The objective and subjective aspects are not wholly separable; her parents’ faces as masks are the “objective correlative” of her fear and isolation. Nor are those masks separable from a myriad other memories and associations she has of her parents.) Such sensed continuities of personal identity

22

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

provide positive content, things to think about, when her attention is turned away from the world. The old woman’s identification with that child, her sense of continuity with her, is an experience of privacy. The sense of continuity of personal identity is not limited to the past, in memory. Character traits may continue through time. Continuity can also be prospective. The child may be aware that her discovery will affect her future. The old woman, remembering herself as she was back then, realizes that she had planted a seed of a lifelong awareness of herself as a separate being; based on such realizations, she recognizes that her current experiences will influence the time remaining to her. Her awareness of the influence of the past brings her to an awareness of the power of the present to influence her future. We experience prospective continuity of personal identity in making a promise. We believe that we can promise now what we will do in the future, because we sense that we will be the same person, have continuity of character, maintain the intent, and remember the obligation assumed. Derek Parfit challenges the continuity through time of personal identity. He offers two views of continuity, calling them the Simple and the Complex Views. In the Simple View, personal identity is absolute, and is independent of particular facts. Personal identity is either wholly present in an individual or not present at all. In the Complex View, continuity depends on facts. Instead of being all-or-nothing, continuity is a matter of degree. According to the Complex View, continuity is the holding of a chain of connected psychological relations. “But ‘connectedness’ has degrees. Between different parts of a person’s life, the connections of memory, character, and intention are—in strength and number—more or less” (1973, p. 140). In this article, Parfit does not explicitly adopt either View, but the Complex View is what interests him. He wants to explore its implications. He believes that the Simple View is no longer feasible, or is so thoroughly out of philosophical vogue that we can ignore it. Parfit initially describes continuity as a matter of degree. As he proceeds he seems to assume, either in comparison to the Simple View, or as the “limiting case,” that continuity in the Complex View is weak. This is the assumption on which he bases conclusions about morality, commitment, desert, and distributive justice. The strength of continuity, which Parfit attributes to the Simple View, is proof of the weakness or shallowness of the Complex View’s continuity. In moving from the Simple to the Complex View, “[w]e decide that our identity is in its nature less deep” (ibid., p. 147), just because we thought the continuity of the Simple View was deep. “When some morally important fact is seen to be less deep, it can be plausibly claimed to be less important. As the limiting case, it becomes more plausible to claim that it has no importance” (ibid., p. 148). In discussing distributive justice, Parfit makes the limiting case general, and takes the lowest denominator of continuity to be universal:

Privacy

23

On the Complex View . . . [w]e regard the existence of a person as, in turn, involving nothing more than the occurrence of interrelated mental and physical events. We do not, of course, deny the reality of people (our own reality!). And we agree that we are not, strictly, series of events—that we are not thoughts, but thinkers, not actions but agents. But we consider this a fact of grammar . . .. We deny that the identity of a person, of the so-called “subject” of mental and physical events, is a further, deep, fact, independent of the facts about the interrelations between these events. We may, when thinking morally, focus less upon the person, the subject of experience, and instead focus more upon the experiences themselves. (Ibid., p. 158) I take issue with Parfit’s claims for several reasons. First, doing so provides the basis for describing the experience of continuity. It also provides the background for describing other forms of privacy. Second, the case I am making for inwardness would collapse if the Complex View of personal identity as described by Parfit were true. If Parfit is right, experiences of continuity as a form of privacy are illusions that we should dismiss. Third, Parfit’s Complex View leaves morality in shambles. Personal morality dissolves into one element of political morality, distributive justice. Little of personal morality remains in the absence of personal continuity. If past, present, and future are detachable from any merely grammatical person, then we cannot take seriously any commitments, promises, obligations, responsibility, or accountability. Notions of education, personal growth and refinement, and learning from experience drop out. We could not develop judgment and understanding. If only earlier and later selves occur, the notion of living a good life drops out as well: “a life” depends on the continuity of the person living it. Any conception of life-long fulfillments, in marriage, in parenthood, in a life’s work, or of the ability to do anything complex, difficult, sophisticated is lost. What is left of personal morality shrinks to the pursuit of immediate pleasures that need no refinement to enjoy, and to the means for distributing them. In Plato’s Philebus, Socrates makes short work of such morality: [I]f you had no memory you would . . . not even remember that you had been enjoying yourself; of the pleasures you encountered at one moment not a vestige of memory would be left at the next . . .. [I]f you had no true judgment you couldn’t judge that you were enjoying yourself when you were; if you were bereft of the power of calculation you couldn’t even calculate that you would enjoy yourself later on. You would be living a

24

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY life not of a human being but of some sort of sea lung or one of those creatures of the ocean whose bodies are incased in shells. (1961, 21c)

In disposing of primitive hedonism, Plato also saw that rising above the state of a clam requires continuity of personal identity: memory, the ability to plan, the ability to develop judgment. John Stuart Mill makes a similar point when he argues on behalf of the higher pleasures over the lower. The higher are made possible by personal continuity, because they are just those that require a commitment to the future and the ability to learn from the past: “the pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments . . .” (1987, p. 18). In the absence of continuity, personal morality dissolves into distributive justice because the only issue left is the best distribution of primitive pleasures (perhaps by government or corporations) among the egos that flicker in and out of existence. Are human beings in that condition worth worrying about at all? Continuity, then, is a condition of morality. Parfit’s Complex View denies the existence of that condition. But we do believe we have morality, and that morality is a powerful presence. Something must be wrong with Parfit’s Complex View. What might be wrong? Unless we can specify what is wrong, morality might be an illusion. Note that Parfit is inconsistent in describing the Complex View as recognizing degrees of continuity. On the Complex View, he writes that the facts of personal identity, “are matters of degree” (1973, p. 138). But in comparison to the Simple View, as we have seen, these facts “can be plausibly claimed to be less important. As the limiting case, it becomes more plausible to claim that it has no importance” (ibid., p. 148). He makes the extreme case, of no importance, universal. What happened to the idea that the facts of personal identity are matters of degree? Parfit’s Complex View has also become all-or-nothing, only now the Complex View is always nothing. The complexity of the Complex View has evaporated. Parfit has lost track of his description of the Complex View as recognizing personal identity variably. So far, Parfit’s case is not that badly damaged. We can read the inconsistency as the product of his rhetorical mischief, his desire to rag adherents of traditional morality. But his rhetoric contributes to a major failing in his account. Parfit assumes, on either View, that we are passive about our continuity. According to the Simple View, a person can do nothing about continuity. If I am a person, I have continuity, all of it. If I am not a person, no continuity exists. But is the same true of the continuity contemplated in the Complex View? Parfit’s position, as his argument develops, is that continuity is of “no importance,” and I can do nothing about it. According to Parfit’s version of the Complex View as well, I am passive.

Privacy

25

We need not accept his position. We can return to the description with which he begins, that the Complex View is genuinely a matter of degree and some facts. If so, I need not passively accept a given degree of continuity. I can do something about my continuity. I can create it, strengthen it, and commit myself to it. Instead of absolving myself of the need to keep a promise by claiming I am no longer the person who made it, I can reaffirm and strengthen that continuity, precisely by keeping the promise. By such an act, I establish my continuity both as an outward fact and as a private experience. I can maintain my ties to the past through recapitulating, recording, reevaluating it. I can commit to developing my character, recognizing that doing so is a lifetime endeavor. This would be an active, express assertion and effecting of continuity. It presents a picture quite different from Parfit’s Complex View. Parfit envisions a current self so alienated from an anticipated self that it seeks to outwit the future self and preclude the future self from achieving its ends (1973, pp. 145–146). I can actively shape my life and character. Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and many religious writers describe some of the ways in which I can shape my life. In the remaining chapters I discuss one field for such activity; the relation of inwardness to outwardness. The ability to create and strengthen continuity reverses Parfit’s claim that identity (which he equates with continuity) is of “no importance.” The fact that I can do something about it, that my continuity can be a choice and a commitment, makes it important. I can make it important for myself. In this light, the Simple View is where continuity loses its importance. With that View, either continuity exists or it does not. No drama, no initiative on my part is involved. I can do nothing about it, and must remain passive. This resembles the threat to morality of doctrines of predestination to salvation or damnation. The view that overlooks or denies the possibility of creating or enhancing continuity carries the danger of encouraging a passivity that allows continuity to erode. The same is true of Parfit’s version of the Complex View, in which the facts of personal identity have “no importance.” Both the Simple and the Complex Views in Parfit’s interpretation are self-fulfilling prophecies that weaken continuity. The insignificance of personal identity in Parfit’s account of the Complex View has two components: weak continuity, and passivity about ourselves. But a different Complex View can accommodate a conception of personal identity that has depth, importance and appeal. Such a conception incorporates the notion that continuity is a matter of genuine degree, strong and weak, and that we can actively determine which it will be. Parfit’s version of the Complex View falsifies the nature of experience, in that he divorces experiences from their subject. He assumes, erroneously, that subjects undergo but do not affect their experience. Any experience has an object and a subject. We must include both in considering the nature of

26

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

experience. Someone, the subject, has to have the experience. Subjects, to varying degrees, depending upon their characters, may determine the nature of their experience as much as or more than does any immediate object. The subject would seem to have little to do with determining the nature of such an elementary sense-perception as seeing a patch of red: whatever the observer, red is red, a patch is a patch. Does this challenge my claim about the importance of the subject in determining experience? A first response might be that the relative roles of subject and object vary. Sensory “atoms,” such as seeing a patch of color, are at the objectextreme of a continuum. If the role of the subject is sometimes minor, at other times the role is important. The more complex the experience, the larger the subject’s role is likely to be. Morally important experiences are usually complex. This should be a warning against using sensory atoms and elementary perceptions to stand for any experience. The response can be still stronger than this: no such elementary sensory experiences exist. No one has ever seen a patch of red removed from all contexts. A patch of red is an area of color seen in a particular set of circumstances—on a flag, a flower, a bicycle, a bleeding wound. Once circumstances are recognized, the importance of the subject emerges. The subject brings those circumstances about, sorts among the elements, arranges the whole, gives structure, chooses which elements to notice and emphasize. Even if we imagine a patch of red, or we conduct a “thought experiment,” and postulate it, we have reasons for undertaking the exercise. The reasons, for instance the debate in which it arises, provide the context. Those reasons belong to the subject, who participates in determining the experience. The risks are grave for morality, of relying on abstracted and simplistic thought experiments. Even if we could cite some logical or epistemological point for postulating experiential atoms such as seeing a patch of red, no point exists for such atoms in morality, where taking them as representative of all experience is destructive. Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein joined reductive logical or epistemological atomism with moral sterility. Wittgenstein banished ethics from philosophy (1922, 6.42). Russell similarly claimed, “I believe . . . that the elimination of ethical considerations from philosophy is both scientifically necessary and—though this may seem a paradox—an ethical advance” (1929, p. 29). In Parfit’s version of the Complex View, continuity of personal identity is unimportant. From that, he infers, “[w]e may tend to focus less upon the person, the subject of experience, and instead focus more on the experiences themselves” (1973, p. 160). This is impossible. Consider the implications, if it were possible. Parfit would consign us to living our lives like a shopper in a supermarket who buys a twelve-ounce package of X experience, a quart can of Y experience, and returns two bunches of Z experience to the shelf. The subject has no role in determining the nature of X, Y, or Z. Experience is prepackaged.

Privacy

27

The subject has little involvement other than to buy or not to buy—if choice is allowed, and not preempted by, for example, advertising, or state fiat. The subject’s role does vary, but the subject always has some role. Two people going to the same concert may have entirely different experiences because their musical sophistication and sensitivity, and their associations with the music—what they bring to the concert—are different. Further, as subject, I may purposefully determine what I bring. By learning more about music, I can elevate my experience of it. I can choose how large a role I will have in determining my experiences. If I do accept the consumerist version of experience, that too is a determination of a sort: I have chosen passivity. The subject’s role in determining his or her experience is related to temporal continuity. Someone arguing Parfit’s case might say that he is not questioning the existence of the subject. What is in doubt is that subject’s continuity with previous and subsequent selves. Lack of continuity need not mean the subject does not participate in determining the nature of the experience. This weaker claim is also untenable. Experience has a temporal context. Current experiences depend on past experiences. If a life dissolves into successive selves, no temporal context exists, or only a weak one. Suppose, for example, that I am infatuated. If I am connected with my past, I can recall the fleetingness of previous infatuations. They were delusions. They failed to outlive either a modest acquaintance with their objects or the removal of their objects from my presence. I can compare the current infatuation with my lasting commitments and recognize its shallowness. For a person not “born yesterday” (a successor self would be born yesterday), an experience does not flutter down like a bird out of the blue. A new experience is placed in a context of past experiences, and (for different people to varying degrees) of reflection on them. That context is part of the experience itself. In addition, a new experience, if important, is likely to modify the body of previous experience, or provide a new perspective on it. Viewed in this way, experiences are not isolated atoms or consumer products. Instead, experiences will be understood as an evolving whole into which new experiences are assimilated. This is far from the consumerist version that devolves from Parfit’s notion of weak continuity of personal identity and of “later selves.” To be sure, people grow senile, suffer strokes, and are attacked by brain tumors. We can lose memory of ourselves as we were at earlier stages of life. Cases of brain damage and other diminished mental capacity are common. Continuity may be compromised. This is consistent with a Complex View that contemplates genuine degrees of continuity. That I need not be passive, that I can do something about my continuity, does not mean that I am immune to contingencies. What I can do will not always be enough. It may be reasonable to think of someone suffering serious, irreversible brain damage as dying, and losing continuity, by degrees. This does not mean that dementia is the condition of all human life.

28

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

Leaving Parfit behind (but see my Appendix, this vol., pp. 115–131), I can now reemphasize the two-sided nature of experience. It involves, or can involve, both object and active subject. The active subject may achieve a high degree of personal continuity. The old woman maintains continuity in her memory of herself as child and in her identification with the child as subject, and with the child’s discovery of herself as a separate being. She may also recognize that the experience she is having now will yet be formative. Continuity is with the future and with the past. Such sensing of her continuity is a form of privacy. The web of connections that contributes to the sense of continuity is still broader than this. What occupies us is not only a general sense of continuity, nor only a memory, such as the child’s evening in the summer cottage. Memories are connected with other memories, experiences with other experiences. The woman returns to the old cottage, or enters another cottage that reminds her of the one of her childhood, she remembers the incident, and other incidents associated with it. She sees her children and grandchildren, and thinks of her parents as young adults. She wonders about her grandchildren and their experience of their parents, who are her now-adult children. She extends her sense of herself as subject and as a separate being, and wonders how much they, her children and grandchildren, feel such things. Supposing that some feel their separateness more than do others, she wonders which of them feels it most intensely. These connections may reverberate almost endlessly: playing cards, sounds of night insects, changing seasons, nights and stars. The sense of continuity invades the corners of her life. The continuity sometimes occupies her thoughts and at other times is the background for other thoughts. Many particular memories populate the sense of continuity. Some of these memories are of experiences of privacy, such as of when she discovered that she was a separate being 3. Subjectivity Sensing my separateness and sensing my continuity are forms of privacy. Sensing my subjectivity is another form of privacy. Simply being a subject is not private, since, as subject, my attention may be outward. While I am the subject of all my experiences, not all experiences are of the world. What is a form of privacy is sensing myself as this subject. In this, subjectivity is like separateness as a form of privacy. Being separate or being a subject is not yet private; being aware that I am separate or that I am a subject is. The old woman’s memory of the child’s evening in the cottage had two sides. One was outward, of the sights, sounds, smells in the cottage. The other was inward, of herself as subject, as the frightened, separated child looking out on the scene. The child at the time was the subject, staring at her strange parents. The old woman reenters that subjectivity, sensing it, in remembering

Privacy

29

the experience. She also senses herself as subject now, doing the remembering. These are instances of privacy. The intensity of consciousness of oneself as subject varies from person to person. Because of separateness, comparisons are hard to make, but examination of different writers suggests variability. Both Søren Kierkegaard and Aristotle, for example, are concerned with living good lives. Kierkegaard is intensely aware of himself as subject. In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle was good observer of some aspects of human beings, including himself, without evincing much sense of himself as subject (1985). Wittgenstein, the logical positivists, and behaviorist psychologists leave little room for sensing oneself as subject, let alone for doing so with any intensity. On the other hand, with an autobiographer such as Augustine of Hippo, the sense of subjectivity is powerful. The firmness with which an Augustine speaks in the first person, and is “in here,” evinces intense subjectivity. Augustine does not just observe himself. He senses himself observing. The intensity with which such writers really do sense their subjectivity remains less than certain for a reader. Nor can I, in my day-to-day encounters, be sure of how private others are. Conceivably, others, even Kierkegaard, are only making their moves among ideas and positions. Kierkegaard too could be wearing a mask—of subjectivity. Accuracy is not an issue in sensing my subjectivity. My memory of an experience of which I was the subject could be false. What the old woman took to be her experience of her parents’ faces turning to masks could have been a dream. It could have been not of her parents but of her grandparents. It could have been a story told to her, which she, with a child’s uncertain hold on the world, and with the passage of time, took to be hers. The accuracy of such memories, their connections with other happenings, does not greatly affect the sense of subjectivity. Accuracy does raise moral issues, but inaccuracy about the original event does not affect this form of privacy. My sense of myself as subject persists whether or not the memory of the object of the original experience is accurate. 4. Agency Sensing my agency is another form of privacy. As a tendency of thought and feeling, the metaphysics of free will is not at issue. My experience of myself as the source of my actions is what matters. The experience may provide content to thoughts and feelings when attention is apart from the world. Thomas Nagel notes, “[w]hile the concept of agency is easily undermined, it is very difficult to give a positive characterization.” Of the sources of the active self he says:

30

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY We are unable to view ourselves simply as portions of the world, and from inside we have a rough idea of the boundary between what is us and what is not, what we do and what happens to us . . .. We cannot simply take an external evaluative view of ourselves—of what we most essentially are and what we do . . .. [Our] acts remain ours and we remain ourselves, despite the persuasiveness of the reasons that seem to argue us out of existence. (1979, pp. 36–37)

From the inside—our privacy—we can sense ourselves, often with confidence and conviction, to be in control. We feel our choices and decisions are ours to make, our actions ours to take. I base my assertion, contra Parfit, that we can do something about our continuity, that we need not be passive about it, on such a conviction. Our sense of agency is variable. The degree to which people sense themselves to be in control is not the same for everyone. We do not all experience the forms of privacy in the same way, to the same degree. Nor is it necessarily the same for one person at different times, although the pattern for a given individual is likely to be constant. The sense of oneself as the source of actions can be diminished or denied. Parfit offers one way in which a person may fail to feel the source of actions: the absence of temporal continuity. I can deny agency for past actions by claiming that my current self is not the self who acted. I would be saying, “Yes, ‘I’ (then) did it, but I (now) am no longer the I (then), so I (now) am not the source of those acts.” To punish the I (now) for what the I (then) did would be no more reasonable than to incarcerate the son for a robbery committed by the father before the son was born. I may deny or weaken my sense of agency in other ways, besides Parfit’s claim about earlier and later selves. I could say, I have not changed from the person who did it, but I was not the source of the act when the act was done. I was ignorant; I was forced to do it; I was manipulated and lied to; it was an accident, with no malicious or venal intent on my part. The point here is not the validity of such excuses, but that they reduce my sense of myself as the source of my actions. They involve a state of mind in which I do not feel (rightly or wrongly, for better or for worse) the source of my actions. Victimhood illustrates this aspect of privacy. A victim may be affected twice. He is affected once by the injury done him. He is affected again to the degree that he is led by the injury to feel (accurately or not) that he is not the source of his actions. When, as victim, he feels that what he does is the product of external causes, he is deprived (whether for better or worse may be left open) of this aspect of privacy. He may feel himself the victim of poverty, abuse, discrimination, and cite those circumstances as the source of his acts. He may blame his parents for his sins. That he allows himself to think in this way may suggest an absence of privacy to start with, a lack of a firm sense

Privacy

31

that he is the source of what he does. He may have an accurate understanding of the situation. The sense of continuity sometimes occupies my thoughts and is background to other thoughts, and myriad particular memories populate that sense of continuity. Something analogous can be said about feeling that I am the source of my actions. The general sense that my actions emanate from “in here” sometimes occupies my thoughts, and is background to other thoughts. In addition, particular memories of past actions enrich that sense of agency. So do current situations and the need to choose among alternative actions. 5. Limits Another form of privacy is sensing limits. I do not mean awareness of specific, personal limitations in the world, such as, “I am not good at foreign languages,” or, “I am socially inept.” These belong to reflexiveness instead of to privacy, as will be discussed in chapter three. I mean sensing such universal limits as the impossibility of being another individual, or of knowing directly how being him is, or of being in two places at one time. This kind of limit is not specific to a given individual. Individual differences lie in the intensity with which individuals feel these universal limits. Some people bump up against them harder than do others. Many such limits exist, and we sense them in different ways. The ways in which each of us senses limits have in common the feeling of containment within unavoidable spatial, temporal, mental boundaries. Even if I wanted to exceed the boundaries in ways that looked to the world, sensing them can involve the feeling that I am confined “in here.” Anyone’s comprehension is limited. What is beyond comprehension will vary from one person to another, according to abilities and circumstances. That there is a beyond is universal. Although different people have different abilities, all people have limits somewhere to what they comprehend. The limits will be “farther out” and encompass more in a bright person than in a dull one, yet the bright person may well experience the limits more intensely. Intelligent people are more prone to be aware of their limits and to feel them with discomfort. They are more likely to be aware that differences in comprehension exist. They also are more likely to value comprehension. Observing their superiority, they have the imagination to suppose that others in turn are likely to be superior to them. They may simply have the acuity to recognize that someone else is superior, or that some concepts are beyond them. They are familiar with and welcome challenges to their comprehension, and know when they have failed at such trials. Some less intelligent people may be aware of and suffer from their limited comprehension, but others, just because they are limited, may lack the acuity and imagination, and not care about such limits, except insofar as they are prevented from securing an ex-

32

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

ternal good, such as a well-paying job. They may not feel the limit per se, as being locked “in here.” An intelligent person facing an impending, inevitable, severe erosion of mental capacities, such as with Alzheimer’s disease or an inoperable brain tumor, might experience intellectual limits with pathos. A question here is whether, as the disease progresses, the intensity with which a person senses the shrinking limits diminishes in proportion to the contraction. We have fundamental sensory limits. Edmund Husserl’s “deaf man” demonstrates one such limit: a person deaf from birth can be told and know about music in external terms, of vibrations, or analogies to other senses, but cannot experience music as such, from the inside (1964, pp. 30–31). The same is true when we lack any of the other senses. We can also speculate, and even feel it as a limit, about senses and associated experiences that we, as human beings, do not have. What is it like to have a bat’s sonar? When we use our eyes, we see by external light. By contrast, bats supply the “beams” by which they receive information: the bat’s experience is beyond us. Radar enhances our data-collection, but we experience the machine and its display of information, not the emission and return of our beams. The same is true of other technologies that expand and refine our capabilities. We may wonder about senses we lack, do not observe in other animals, and cannot imagine. Other limits are temporal. These, too, are universal, yet felt with varying intensity. A usually minor limit is toward the past. I cannot literally relive some period in my past, nor can I live in some favored period in history. Although not usually a major issue, some writers evince nostalgia for, for example, the antebellum South, medieval France, Provence, Italy, or classical Greece. Another way to feel limited about the past has to do with my “prehistory.” Augustine of Hippo is concerned with issues of time. In the first book of the Confessions, thinking about his early childhood, he asks what he was before he was born: But see, my infancy is dead long ago, and I still live. Lord, you who live forever and in whom nothing dies—since before the beginning of the ages, and before anything that can even be called “before,” you are . . .. [T]ell to me, your suppliant, O God, in your mercy, tell to me, your wretched servant, whether my infancy followed another age of mine that was already dead. Or was it that time which I passed within my mother’s womb? . . . What was there even before this, my joy, my God? Was I anywhere, or anyone? I have no one to tell me this, neither father nor mother could do so, nor the experience of others, nor my own memory. (1960, pp. 47–48) An unfulfillable longing for the future is also possible. This may occur in someone excited by technology, or who wants answers to scientific ques-

Privacy

33

tions that may bear fruit only decades hence. Such a person may feel trapped in the present, a Moses on Pisgah. Death is the temporal limit that most preoccupies us. We anticipate death in different ways, sometimes with indifference, sometimes with strong feeling. The feeling might be joy, for instance as expressed in spirituals and hymns, in which death is anticipated as a release from suffering and actual or metaphorical bondage. If we seek death as the entrance into a better life, it would seem to be anything but an experience of a limit. We might also feel the prospect of death with mundane practicality, as a matter of course, or as something to prepare for. It may be merely regrettable or unfortunate. We may anticipate death with fear, abhorrence, or repugnance. Some fear death intensely; others fear death little. I emphasize fear because it can have a powerful influence on the goodness of a life. The fear itself can color a life. It can contribute to cowardice, sympathy, the value placed on human life. Feelings such as fear, abhorrence, repugnance, horror at the prospect of death are associated with privacy. Titus Carus Lucretius devotes much of Book III of The Nature of the Universe to an atomist account of life, and to what happens in death (1951). He seeks to show that fear of death is both the root of much evil and wholly unnecessary. In Lucretius’ account, though, the fear is not of a limit or temporal termination. The fear is of retribution in an afterlife. The cure is to recognize that death is nothingness. For Lucretius, then, termination is a matter of relief. The fear Lucretius describes is wordly, not private. He wants to disabuse us of the belief that the world, transposed to an afterlife, will impose retribution. The afterlife, he says, does not exist. Aristotle offers a different “worldly” explanation for why a person might fear death: [T]he more he has every virtue and the happier he is, the more pain he will feel at the prospect of death. For this sort of person, more than anyone, finds it worth while to be alive, and is knowingly deprived of the greatest goods, and this is painful.” (1985, 1117b, 10–15) No doubt, happiness in life has some relation to fear of death, but the issue has more dimensions than Aristotle allows. We can as well conceive of a person who, having lived a happy, fulfilled life, is more able to accept death. He or she feels its prospect with less pain just because life has been rewarding and full. The knowledge that as much as possible has been made of life is consolation for death. We may even anticipate death as a fitting culmination. The equanimity, even the satisfaction, which David Hume expressed at the approach of his death was of this sort. Hume imagined meeting Charon. He noted that many people trifle with death’s boatman, making excuses so as to

34

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

gain themselves a little more time alive. “I could not well imagine,” said Hume, as reported by Adam Smith: what excuse I could make . . . in order to obtain a little delay. I have done every thing of consequence which I ever meant to do; and I could at no time expect to leave my relations and friends in a better situation than that in which I am now likely to leave them: I, therefore, have all reason to die contented. (Hume, 1962, pp. 312–313) Hume anticipates his death with equanimity because he finds his life satisfying to himself and beneficial to those he cares about. We can also conceive of a person, nearing the end of a life of frustration, disappointment and poor choices, pained and embittered at the approach of death because his or her life, the only life he or she has, has been paltry. This complexity suggests that the goodness, or lack of it, in a life, does not adequately account for, and is separable from, the fear or abhorrence of death, which some people feel. Bernard Williams puts the question the other way, asking, “why we go on at all” (1981, p. 10). His answer, like Aristotle’s and Lucretius’, is worldly, “[W]e need only the idea of a man’s ground projects providing the motive force which propels him into the future, and gives him a reason for living” (ibid., p. 13). “Ground projects” may well contribute to the desire to go on living, but they cannot account for it entirely. If projects are of the world, they can carry on beyond my death. They may be corporate ventures. I can arrange affairs so that they do go on: I can set up funds, appoint successors, leave instructions, write contracts. My death could even benefit some projects: I could sacrifice my life for a political or religious cause. This could occur, for example, in assassinating a tyrant or in dying a martyr’s death. In some instances my projects are separable from staying alive, and so cannot be the whole reason to go on. That a project is not always the reason for going on is suggested in this possible reaction to the idea of sacrificing my life: “But then I will not be around to see it succeed!” This brings us closer to my argument. Death, as the termination of a person, is the termination of a subject. Miguel de Unamuno makes, “[t]he man of flesh and bone; the man who is born, suffers, and dies— above all who dies . . .” the starting point for philosophy (1954/1921, p.1). He cites, “all this tragic fight of man to save himself, this immortal craving for immortality . . ., all this is simply a fight for consciousness” (ibid., p. 13). I cite Unamuno because he offers evidence of the privacy of the experience of the prospect of death. That prospect may occupy thoughts and feelings apart from the world. Eventual termination as subject, as agent, as person, as a conscious and self-conscious being may be fearful and the limit abhorrent.

Privacy

35

This is aside from, and in addition to, the happiness of my life and the success of my projects. Accomplishments, what is recorded of my life, and others’ memories of me, may extend beyond my life, but in death, my inner life, privacy, is annihilated. I may hope that friends and relations, works, influence, and impressions endure; the person who hopes, and who is aware of himself hoping, does not. Clinging to consciousness, one with my state as subject, I find the prospect of the closing of the inner space, its shrinking to a point and then disappearing, frightening. Hume notes that most people want to put Charon off as long as they can. Those feelings are a form of privacy. They can occupy me apart from the world. The fear of death is not just a matter of pleasure and pain, happiness and unhappiness, success or failure. Fear of death is a matter of existence itself. Since this is my existence per se, not any outcome of my life in the world, its eventual loss is something that occupies thoughts and feelings in privacy. In explaining why some people’s anticipation of the limit of death is attended by fear, abhorrence, and repugnance, considerations of privacy and inwardness must be added to the worldly accounts of Lucretius, Aristotle, and Williams. 6. Bodily Sensations Bodily sensations are private. They can provide content to thoughts and feelings apart from the world. The distinction between sensation and perception is useful here. Sensations are private to the person who has them, whereas perception is of objects in the world. Further, some sensations have clear and immediate causes beyond the body, while the body engenders other sensations. We should assign body-engendered sensations especially to privacy. They draw attention away from the world: physiological rhythms, such as the beating of my heart, my respiration; hearing the sound of my voice within my head apart from the significance of the words; the urges of appetites; physiological processes such as digestion and excretion; the pains and discomforts of disease. Up to a point, external causes of sensations, such as an object of sexual desire, or an attacker, draw my attention outward. In contrast, I am aware of a headache or of vertigo as mine. In having no immediate external cause, they draw my attention inward. Such awareness contributes both to my separateness and to my privacy. Whatever their source, whether engendered in my body or by an object in the world, I cannot literally share pain, pleasure, or physiological need (as opposed to communicating, describing or re-creating any of these). This reminds me of my separateness. Depending on its intensity, the reminder may occupy my thoughts and feelings. Such thoughts, and the intimacy I feel with my body and its sensations, contribute to privacy. The progression of sensations that accompany prolonged physical activity illustrates a dynamic of privacy. Such an activity usually has an external

36

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

purpose, so that at the outset I direct attention outward. Privacy increases if the activity becomes fatiguing, or painful, and I begin to feel cut off from the world in focusing on the fatigue or pain. But if I keep on with the activity, attention to the activity is overwhelmed by the increasingly mindless keeping going, despite the fatigue or pain. Privacy then diminishes because awareness, in general, is reduced. The overarching sensations of fatigue, pain, doggedness, take over, with a lessening sense of myself. Privacy then tends to be subsumed in separateness from the world, even while the world continues to provide the reason for engaging in the physical activity. In that state, the reason recedes into the background. I have described inwardness in its negative and in its positive aspect. The negative aspect is separateness, which is a withdrawal, absence, or negation of attention to the world. The positive aspect is privacy, in which content exists for attention, although that content is not of the external world. In privacy, matter exists for a person to have thoughts and feelings about. My approach has been to describe each of the two aspects according to several of its forms. The forms of separateness are escapism, solitariness, alienation, disengagement, and the forms of separateness having to do with the body. The forms of privacy include sensing separateness, continuity of personal identity, subjectivity, agency, limits, and bodily sensation. To justify the umbrella term “inwardness,” I will now draw these aspects and forms together, distinguishing inwardness from other states of mind.

Three COHESIVENESS We can consider separateness and privacy together, as aspects of inwardness, because they share a direction for attention. In separateness, attention is disengaged from the world. In privacy, attention is on inner experience. In both, attention is away from the world. We can take the cohesiveness of inwardness beyond this generalization. In this chapter, I show that separateness and privacy belong together by making some connections and distinctions. The connections are among the forms of separateness and privacy. The distinctions are between inwardness and other tendencies of thought. The result will be to emphasize the cohesiveness of inwardness. First, I should clarify a point of terminology. The major distinction running through this work is between inwardness on the one hand and what, on the other, has so far been called outward attention, attention to the world or outwardness. I have used the last three phrases interchangeably. Henceforth, for the sake of brevity and convenience, I rely mainly on “outwardness.” I do so with a caveat: we should avoid assuming that there is symmetry between inwardness and outwardness. Symmetry is one spatial metaphor among many that seem inescapable in discussing mental states: “inwardness” itself is such a metaphor, as are “direction” for attention, and “separateness.” Others will occur below. These metaphors could mislead. Adopting “outwardness” as a frequently used term is a good occasion to remember that such terms are only metaphors. We must avoid surrendering to the images they conjure. Inwardness and outwardness are not symmetrical. In outwardness, the difference between subject and objects is clear. In inwardness, the subject is the object. In part, inwardness consists in—is augmented by, reaches its fruition in—awareness of inwardness. A shorthand formula for expressing this point might be that the phenomenology of inwardness is its metaphysics. Another preliminary clarification: I have not tried to delineate a boundary between “in” and “out.” Doing so would raise questions, such as whether the boundary is at my skin, or between the mental and the material, which would distract from the contribution to the understanding of morality that I am pursuing. In chapter two, I suggested that bodily sensations are a form of privacy in that they occupy thoughts and feelings apart from the world. Even there I avoided an unnecessarily sharp distinction between in and out. The issue was one of degree. Those sensations engendered in the body are more private than those that have clear and immediate causes beyond the body. Taking note of the suffix, “-ward,” will help to avoid a misunderstanding. It

38

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

connotes direction (as in “westward”), not location. The direction for a subject’s attention is not in or out, but inward or outward. The difference between inwardness and outwardness is not marked by a physical boundary, for example, the skin, nor is it between one type of substance and another. The difference is in the direction of attention. With outwardness, attention is to the world. With inwardness, attention is separate from the world, and private. The contrast between the siblings in chapter one, whose inheritance allowed them to make choices about the kind of lives they wanted to lead, is an example. One became a doctor whose attention was outward, toward worldly concerns, duties, and commitments. Another instance of outwardness was Tamburlaine, whose imperial rapacity involved intentness on the world. An alert, practiced hunter offered another, less public, instance of outwardness. The other sibling was given to inwardness, in the aspect of separateness. His attention was apart from the world, occupied by fantasies. His was a life of escape, except when the minimal requirements of his living arrangements demanded otherwise. Another instance of inwardness was the child whose discovery of her separateness plunged her into fear and isolation. It also marked a more complex awareness of her relation to the world. Many years later, as an old woman remembering herself as that child, she evinced another instance of inwardness, as in her privacy she felt and pursued continuity with the child. Given this major distinction, can inwardness hold its own against outwardness? Jean-Paul Sartre, in The Transcendence of the Ego, appears to claim that a person necessarily is outward, that awareness of self is another form of outwardness, that any impression of two directions for attention is illusory (1960). For my purpose, the two different directions for a person’s attention, and the weight given to each, is the issue. Even here, outwardness would seem to overwhelm inwardness. The world commands attention. Survival depends on it. Even the escapist has to go to the bank, pay the rent, and buy groceries. How then could inwardness be weighty and distinct enough to be morally important? Objectively, a single individual is minuscule compared to the world. We can take a different approach, the standpoint of the individual as subject. I can separate myself from the world—not totally, not continually, but in the different ways already described. In separateness, I can build a temporary dike to hold out the world. As subject, I have content that can be balanced with and juxtaposed to the world—privacy. From the standpoint of the world, the privacy of an individual may shrink to insignificance, but for the individual it can loom large. Depending on the person and the situation, much can occupy my attention. The world’s demands vary. If survival requires constant attending to the world, little room remains for inwardness.

Cohesiveness

39

Other circumstances allow more. The escapist sibling could live his life because an inheritance freed him from most exigencies. How cohesive can inwardness be? I have described inwardness under two aspects and a variety of forms. Are these aspects and forms too scattered or diffuse to warrant treatment under one name, “inwardness”? Or, are they connected together, and together distinguishable enough from other states of mind or elements of character to allow us to speak of them as entering into a balance with outwardness? I argue yes, on three grounds. First, internal similarities and connections exist among the aspects and forms of inwardness. Second, we can draw distinctions between inwardness and other tendencies of thought with which it could be confused. Third, we experience unity of ourselves as subjects and as agents, and so experience the unity of inwardness. The first ground, the similarities and connections among the forms of inwardness, has a negative and a positive side. The negative side is that the different forms of separateness and privacy have the unity of a distinct, common, negative direction: away from, not toward the world. The positive side consists in the ways in which the forms of separateness and privacy interact with and complement each other, making a web of close, sometimes overlapping, and usually mutually reinforcing connections. Separateness, for instance, makes privacy possible. If I could not withdraw or withhold attention from the world, and were always wholly occupied outwardly (as I might be for a short period in an emergency), I could not have private thoughts and feelings. Conversely, although separateness is possible without privacy, by itself separateness is usually sterile. I can withdraw or be apart from the world without having much to withdraw to, at the cost of limiting the scope of my life. Without privacy, separateness tends merely to shrink a life. That is how the escapist brother lives: he occupies himself, in his withdrawal from the world, not in privacy, but with the nether world of fantasy. In addition to this complementary relation of separateness and privacy, their specific forms interact in myriad ways. They reinforce, enrich, modify, expand, and deepen each other, in a web of related experience. Here is a sampling of such interactions. Shutting down the senses (closing eyes, closing a door, or covering ears against sounds) may allow a person to retreat into the escapism of daydreams and fantasies. One form of separateness, then, may contribute to another. Escapism allows a person to dwell on unreal things, thereby facilitating social separateness (masks, alienation, and reserve) without corresponding privacy. One form of separateness, then, can contribute to another at the expense of privacy. The physical senses that I can close down in separateness are linked, in the body, to the physical sensations that are private. The body, then, is the common locus of a form of separateness and a form of privacy. Experiences of the body, the feel of arms, legs, feet, torso, familiar aches, pains, pleasures, comforts, may confirm and weave into a

40

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

sense of continuity as subject: a group of private experiences having to do with the body reinforces and expands another group of private experiences, those of continuity and memory, and vice versa. The body and its sensations are associated with awareness of mortal limits, and with feelings associated with mortality, fear, abhorrence, relief: awareness of mortality augments and gives pathos to our sense of the body, and bodily sensations make the sense of mortality immediate and concrete. Sensing continuity of identity is essential to sensing oneself as the source of actions, since without continuity, a person cannot make a commitment. Responsibility dissipates if a person is unable to identify now with past actions: agency has a temporal context and requires a sense of continuity. The sense of continuity (for example, the old woman thinking of herself as the child in the cottage) includes memories of oneself as subject and as separate: continuity, subjectivity, separateness are often experienced together. The sense of agency and the sense of subjectivity are interwoven. My sense of being the source of my actions responds to my sense of being the subject of experiences and perceptions. The sense that I am an agent influences my perceptions and experiences as subject. A positive correlation does not always exist between aspects and forms of inwardness. Aesthetes or dilettantes, for example, might be quite aware of the operation of their fine sensibilities with little feeling of responsibility for their actions. Conversely, those with a strong sense of themselves as the source of their actions (for instance a person living in a strict, traditional religious community) might feel little separateness or awareness of themselves as subjects. Despite such exceptions, the connections described suffice for understanding inwardness as a web of experience. Even for the exceptions, the dynamics of inwardness and its aspects and forms is useful for describing experience. Along with the unity of a common direction for attention, the web provides grounds for considering inwardness a state of mind possessing a significant degree of cohesiveness. We may be tempted to go beyond thinking of inwardness as a web of connected and interacting tendencies and experiences, and reify inwardness as a realm, the inner space in which the experiences occur. For instance, I have used “inner space,” its shrinking to a point and disappearance, as a metaphor for death. This inner space is the potential or capability, beyond what is actual, for inwardness. The case I am making for the moral importance of inwardness does not depend on whether we conceive inwardness as a web of actual experience, or as a realm that includes the potential for such experience. Web or realm, the use of the term “inwardness” is justified as applying to a state of mind with cohesiveness sufficient to balance outwardness.

Cohesiveness

41

1. Comparisons Distinguishing inwardness from tendencies of thought with which it could be confused will enhance an understanding of its cohesiveness. These other tendencies are reflexiveness, introspection, and self-consciousness. (The relation of inwardness to self-knowledge will be discussed in chapter five.) One comparison is between inwardness and reflexiveness. “I dress myself,” and “he dresses himself,” are, grammatically, reflexive. In the current context, reflexiveness is restricted to the first person: I am reflexive when I speak or think about myself. This does not require the use of the pronoun, “myself.” “I am tall” is reflexive—a statement that I might make about myself. “I am tall” is unlikely to have to do with inwardness. I can be reflexive about any aspect of myself, including, as in “I am tall,” some outward aspect. In the sentence, “I believe you,” I am saying something about the person I address. It also contains an element of reflexiveness, in that it refers to my attitude toward the addressee’s assertion. The degree of reflexiveness of such statements depends on context. I can also be reflexive about inwardness, for instance, in saying, “I feel responsible for what I do,” or, “I feel separate from the people around me.” In such cases, I am speaking about myself; my speech has to do with inwardness. Stuart Hampshire offers an instance of reflexiveness in the context of morality: In his own action, and in the use of practical reason, a man is always forming a pattern of behavior, and therefore a character, and at the same time criticising and regretting his own behavior and habits in retrospect. There is therefore a circle of criticism and decision, of reflection and action, that continues as long as he is conscious. (1959, p. 248) The notion of “circling” back on one’s self, though a circling from a different angle from Hampshire’s, is worth emphasizing in describing reflexiveness. In reflexiveness, I can launch out into the world and then circle back, to focus on myself from the perspective of the world, as I am in the world. Hampshire’s emphasis on action, which occurs and makes changes in the world, suggests that a motion into the world can be involved in reflexiveness. By contrast, inwardness, as sensing separateness, subjectivity, and so forth, does not circle into the world. Inwardness is direct; it stays within. Reflexiveness can be wide-ranging. It need not have the moral seriousness of Hampshire’s words. An ambitious executive assessing the effect of his or her presentation at a meeting on his promotability is being reflexive. A child telling a mother what she or he said in school is also reflexive. Reflexiveness is usually active and has a purpose, often as a mode of inquiry or description. Inwardness, as a state of mind, can lead to purposefulness, but in itself is not purposeful. We can study inwardness via reflexive-

42

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

ness, but the converse is not the case. Reflexiveness may be a search for information about oneself or an attempt to provide information about oneself. Inwardness may be the source of such information or the content, but in itself is not a search for or a presentation of information. If we take reflexiveness as any form of self-reference, inwardness could be a form of reflexiveness. Reflexiveness tends to be verbal and explicit. It often circles into the world and back again. Inwardness may also be conscious and verbalized. It often reaches its fruition in self-awareness. But sensing separateness, subjectivity, continuity, limits, and bodily sensation is often buried deeper than the readiness or ability to articulate it. The next comparison is between inwardness and introspection. Introspection is like reflexiveness and unlike inwardness in that introspection is purposeful. By introspection, I can seek insight into my state of mind of inwardness, but inwardness need not seek anything. Inwardness is a state of mind that senses, but does not actively pursue, though it may be the condition for activity and pursuit. In introspection, I seek an awareness of my state or condition, such as my motives and sensations. I inspect myself. Introspection is like inwardness and different from reflexiveness in being direct; introspection is less likely to involve the circling into the world and then back to me that is often characteristic of reflexiveness. Introspection is also like inwardness in focusing on some aspects of me, whereas I can apply reflexiveness to anything about myself, including what I do and how I appear in the world. Inwardness and introspection do not always deal with the same aspects of me. Introspection can inquire into the nature of my perceptions of the world and my motives for actions in the world. Inwardness can contribute to such perceptions and motives, and to divulging answers to introspection’s inquiries, but inwardness does not, per se, address them. Instead, inwardness senses the subject of those perceptions, the agent who has those motives. The third comparison is that of inwardness with self-consciousness. The two may overlap, depending on how “self-consciousness” is used. We must specify the relevant sense. We must dispose of a popular use of “selfconsciousness.” This use is almost synonymous with embarrassment, as a person might say, “I am self-conscious speaking in front of an audience,” or “I feel self-conscious undressing in the locker room.” We can further circumscribe self-consciousness by ruling out consciousness of oneself in the world, aside from embarrassment. Awareness of my appearance, or of my place in society, is not inwardness. If “self-consciousness” means consciousness of selfhood, that I am a self in an Augustinian, Cartesian, or Kierkegaardian sense, then there is considerable coincidence with inwardness. Self-consciousness in this meaning can apply, as an umbrella term, to the forms of privacy. The greater utility of “inwardness” lies in its focus on a particular element of self, that comprised by

Cohesiveness

43

separateness and privacy. Inwardness is also useful in being different from self-consciousness as embarrassment or awareness of my place in the world. These distinctions between inwardness on the one hand, and reflexiveness, introspection and self-consciousness on the other bring inwardness into sharper focus. They strengthen the idea that inwardness, as a common direction for attention, and with a web of connections among its forms, is a state that can balance outwardness. 2. Unity Reference to consciousness of self suggests another point about the cohesiveness of inwardness. Experience is experienced by a single subject. In making this point, I leave aside the metaphysical issue of the unity of the soul that traditionally engaged philosophers. What I mean is that to have more (or less) than one subject of an experience is inconceivable. If multiple subjects exist, there must be multiple experiences. In Derek Parfit’s manner, we can think of a constant flow of selves, each replacing the other, each having its own experience apart from what it replaces and what replaces it. To think in this way is possible, but a mistake. I do not know how to think of multiple subjects of a single experience. Thomas Nagel believes that science can shed light on “the idea of a single subject of experience and action” (1979, pp. 147–164). He examines reports from neuroscience about patients who have had communication severed between their two cerebral hemispheres: “What one naturally wants to know about these patients is how many minds they have” (ibid). Nagel finds grounds for skepticism about the unity of the subject of consciousness. Science, he says, suggests that a mind is a complex system whose unity is relative and a function of the integration of its components. “This system speaks in the first person singular through our mouths, and that makes it understandable that we should think of its unity as in some sense numerically absolute, rather than relative and a function of the integration of its contents” (ibid., p. 163). He shares this dismissal of the evidence of grammatical usage, first person singular, with Sartre and Parfit. Sartre uses “I” while arguing that the referent of “I” does not exist. Parfit considers the notion that we are not thoughts but thinkers, not actions but agents merely “a fact of grammar.” All three writers (although Nagel less than the others) engage in a kind of doublethink. They question the reality of “I,” the agent, the subject, yet they cannot avoid speaking of them. They get around this intellectual bifurcation by separating out and dismissing “grammar.” We should ask, if this is how we have to speak, why might it be so? The answer lies, not in science or in metaphysics, but in the nature of experience. We employ the first person singular, and “the thinker,” “the agent,” “the subject,” because that is the only way we can experience or can conceive of

44

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

experiencing. Nagel recognizes the difficulty while Sartre and Parfit are untroubled by it. After considering the findings of science, current and potential, Nagel believes it, “possible that the ordinary simple idea of a single person will come to seem quaint some day . . .. But it is also possible that we shall be unable to abandon the idea no matter what we discover” (ibid., p. 164). The reason for the potential inability to abandon the idea lies in the inability to experience otherwise. If the unity of the subject is in the nature of experience, it will be not just difficult, but impossible to abandon. Unless we can describe or conceive of an experience with no subject, or with more than one subject, we cannot let unity go. As for no subject, I do not know what a subjectless experience could be. As for multiple subjects, two people can have experiences of the same object. For example, two people can admire one maple tree. This is two experiences, however much the experiences resemble each other. For there to be two subjects of the same experience is another thing entirely. Recall that I cannot literally share another’s experience. I may know what another is experiencing. Sharing another’s experience, in both its inward and its outward aspects, would be at the cost of subsuming my identity in that of the other, thereby losing mine. This suggests some of the inevitability of the unity of the subject of experience. My experience is mine, yours is yours, his is his, hers is hers. For the kind of exploration of morality pursued here, dabbling in such extreme cases as severed cerebral hemispheres is not useful. If we must: if each hemisphere functions independently, such that two subjects exist, even if they are within a single cranium, even if they are contemplating one object, then two experiences exist. Conversely, if two simultaneous experiences occur, two subjects exist. The ineradicability of the sense of unity of the subject in experience is another form of privacy. It too is content which can occupy my thoughts and feelings apart from the world. This form of privacy makes a strong contribution to the cohesiveness of inwardness. It also takes its place in the web of connections among the forms of inwardness. Expunging a sense of unity from other forms of inwardness will be difficult, beside that of awareness of myself as subject. I do not know how I can sense myself as agent without confirming my sense of my unity. I could not conceive of myself as the source of choices and actions if I thought of myself as more or as less than unity. If I think there is less than unity, I must think there is no source; I would have to deny my agency. Thinking that there is more than one source would dilute any urgency I might feel about making a choice or acting. I would think I could choose both alternatives, and act and not act at once. “Internal” finger pointing would dissipate responsibility.

Cohesiveness

45

When I cannot conceive such forms of inwardness except as unities, and the forms are connected, the cohesiveness of my inwardness for me is enhanced. For me as subject it can help to balance outwardness. A footnote: Nagel infers from the findings of neuroscience that a mind is a complex system whose unity is relative and a function of the integration of its components. This relative “anatomical” unity is different from the unavoidable unity of the subject of experience. Whatever the underlying anatomical complexity, my subjecthood in experience must be sensed as a unity. Moral unity may be a matter of degree, apart from the anatomy of the brain and apart from the unavoidable unity of the subject of experience. This moral unity is close to what I offered in response to Parfit’s Complex View of continuity. I can do something about my moral unity. As I can work to maximize continuity, I can pursue integration to maximize moral unity. What could motivate me to strengthen unity and continuity, and to resist their erosion? Much of the motivation comes from an existing sense of unity and continuity. If unity and continuity are already there, I would want to maintain and deepen them. If they are weak and diffuse, I might not care. 3. Illustration The following case illustrates the cohesiveness of inwardness, in connections among its forms, in distinctions between inwardness and other tendencies of thought with which it could be confused, and in an unavoidable sense of unity in the subject of experience and agent of action. (The narrative offers more detail than is required for this immediate purpose. I will need it in subsequent chapters to illustrate other points as my description of the relation of inwardness to morality develops.) A couple at the border of middle and old age has been together for four decades. Their children are grown and pursuing their independent lives. The woman is now considering converting to her husband’s religion. When she was a child the woman’s family had practiced a different religion, but in college, she became vocally disdainful of all religion. Her husband had inherited a religious identity of sorts from his family, but that identity lay in the distant past. His parents and his grandparents had been atheists, and there had been no religious affiliation or rituals in his childhood. Their marriage had implied no commitment on either part to religion in general or to any religion in particular. As time went by, amid the joys, sorrows, fulfillments, disappointments of marriage, parenthood, careers, and their responses to the world around them, and in their intercourse with each other, the woman and the man started to develop a religious awareness. As it happened, in the course of her professional career, the woman was in frequent contact with institutions of her hus-

46

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

band’s ancestral religion. She came to respect it. She suggested that he give his religious awareness the ancestral expression. The husband was reluctant to give his religious awareness specific form. Among other reasons, he feared that their marriage would suffer if he were in, and his wife outside, the religion. He told her that he would not consider doing so without her accompanying him. They put the issue on hold. The wife’s awareness of her husband’s religious consciousness, her growing religious feelings, and her respect for his ancestral religion deepen to the point where she is ready to accompany him. He starts to study and practice. While she insists that the observance is his, and that she is only accompanying him, she too studies and participates in the practice. She is thinking about converting but does not consider herself committed to it. What are the connections among the forms of inwardness here? Can we draw distinctions between inwardness in this woman, and reflexiveness, introspection, self-consciousness? What can be said of her sense of unity as the subject of such experiences and as agent contemplating an action, religious conversion? Her religious feelings come to her mainly in solitude. In solitude, she thinks about whether to convert. Sometimes she worries that a religious interest is escapist, a substitute for taking on the world’s demands and challenges. She is aware of herself as the subject of both religious experience and the deliberations over what she should do. She feels wholly responsible for what has led to this, for making the decision, for whatever would follow whatever decision she makes; she does not doubt that she is the agent. The question of the continuity of the wife’s identity weighs on her: would her life lack continuity if she decided on such a new course as conversion? Was there a discontinuity in going as far as she had already? Would she be disowning her deceased parents—their different religion—or her college days—her denial of all religion—all her past? She senses herself as the subject, past, present and, as she anticipates it, future, but wonders whether she will still be herself if she converts. At the same time, she senses her continuity in her fear of discontinuity. The fear almost guarantees that continuity would accompany change. In confronting such questions, she also senses her limits. The decision is hard for her. Her mortality weighs on her. The presence to her of her aging body presses home the passing of time. The woman’s attention is pulled in two directions. Her husband, the religious institution they have been attending, and their grown children, are all out there. She can, in her thoughts, trace out the physical route between her house and the place of worship. She experiences God, the object of her religious feeling, as other, as “out there.” In the other direction, she, the person struggling with all this, as subject and agent with inevitable limits, is “in here.” All of the forms of inwardness, the solitude and the potential for escapism, her awareness of her separateness in her struggle with the decision, her

Cohesiveness

47

sense of herself as subject and as agent, her concern for the continuity of her identity, even as reflected in her fear of discontinuity, her sense of her limits, especially mortality, and the presence to her of her body, share a common direction for her attention: away from the world. These forms of inwardness are inter-connected. The woman’s sense of her body, including its aging, is connected to and augments her sense of her personal continuity, since her body has always been with her. She is intimately familiar with it, its sensations, abilities, disabilities. Although her body has aged, changes in it day-to-day are imperceptible. When she does notice, the change is in the context of the continuity of the rest of her body. Her sense of her body is also connected to her sense of her limits, her mortality. She knows her mortality in the ways her body is aging, slowly weakening, growing more prone to injury and discomfort. When she ponders her decision, she withdraws attention from the world’s immediate demands, in the separateness of solitude. The withdrawal involves physical removal from distractions and mental withdrawal of attention. Via her body, then, continuity, solitude, and the limit of mortality are connected. While the woman’s sense of herself as subject and agent never entirely disappear even in worldly activity, she feels immersed most intensely in subjecthood and agency in solitude. A form of separateness, solitude, and forms of privacy, her sense of herself as subject and agent, are linked. The possibility of conversion confronts this woman because of her religious experiences and what she perceives about her husband’s religion. If she does convert, she will have a set of experiences she otherwise would not have, and which, she knows, will influence the rest of her life. In this interaction between experience and action, her sense of herself as subject is connected with her sense of herself as agent. In different ways, then, this woman experiences the forms of inwardness as a web of connections. We can distinguish the woman’s inwardness from reflexiveness, introspection, self-consciousness, with which it might be confused. When the wife discusses the question with her husband she uses the pronouns, “I,” “me,” “myself,” and is reflexive. She is also reflexive when the reference to herself is only implicit. In the course of these discussions, she sometimes describes aspects of her inwardness. In so describing herself, she is being reflexive. She offers the description of her inwardness to her husband, who is in the world. The description of her inwardness is offered to the perspective of the world, to enable him to understand her situation. Her reflexive description is verbal and explicit, while inwardness per se can be an inarticulate sensing. Even when she does not describe herself to someone else, in reflecting on her situation and thinking about herself, she sometimes treats herself as an object to which she might be external. Such reflexiveness is active. It has a purpose, to make herself known to someone else or to herself in order to make a decision.

48

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

In this woman, inwardness is also distinguishable from introspection. Like reflexiveness, and unlike inwardness, introspection is purposeful. She examines her motives for converting. Is her religious impulse merely an escapist yielding to the temptation to ignore the world’s injustices, dangers, hard realities? Is it an empty hope by which to deny mortality? Is it tied to her relation to her husband, something to have in common with him? If so, when would this, as a motivation, be legitimate? Introspection here is an effort to identify her emotions, test her motives. She is seeking information about herself. Some of the information may be about her inwardness, but the work of identification and exploration struggles toward objectivity about herself. She wants to formulate a description of herself for herself. She could also use that information in discussions with her husband and others. If we take self-consciousness in the sense of embarrassment or social discomfort, the woman can illustrate another distinction. There is no social discomfort in the kind of thinking described thus far. If she does decide to convert, she will have to tell others. How will siblings and cousins react, remembering how vocally disdainful she had been of religion when she was young? More important to her, how will such a change affect her children? Will they feel estranged from her? Will coming home to their parents’ dwelling with its unfamiliar signs of religious observance make them uncomfortable? She can describe self-consciousness in this sense, potential embarrassment in front of her siblings and cousins, and the possibility of her children’s discomfort, reflexively. She can explore this phenomenon via introspection. Such concern for how others might react to her would have more to do with outwardness than with inwardness. An unavoidable unity attends the wife’s sense of herself as subject and agent in all this. She cannot divide herself in two, one part experiencing some aspect, the other part another aspect of her religious journey. She cannot both make a religious commitment and not make it. One subject exists for her complex, developing religious experience. Without a subject, there would be no experience. With two subjects, two complex experiences would exist, not one. She confronts her single complex of experience as a single agent who must make a choice. Without a unity to her agency, she would not need to choose between alternatives. Whatever the woman decides, there is one complex experience, one subject of the complex experience, and one agent who will make the commitment or decline it. She might compromise and make only a tepid or a conditional commitment, or she might postpone the decision, but she can only conceive of that too as involving one agent, one subject. The unavoidable unity that attends her sense of herself as subject and as agent contributes to the cohesiveness of inwardness as she might balance it against outwardness. In this chapter, I have addressed some issues left open by my descriptions of inwardness as separateness and privacy. The most useful label for

Cohesiveness

49

attention to the world is “outwardness.” In adopting it, I cautioned that inwardness and outwardness are not symmetrical. I then made the case for the cohesiveness of inwardness on three grounds. The first was that, beside the direction for attention they all share, away from the world, the different forms of separateness and privacy are inter-connected and reinforce each other. On the second ground, I sharpened the conception of inwardness by distinguishing it from reflexiveness, introspection, and self-consciousness. On the third ground, I suggested that the unity of the subject seems ineradicable from how we experience. The unity of the agent is also unavoidable in how we choose and act. We cannot but sense such unity in ourselves. This sense of unity is another form of privacy and contributes to the cohesiveness of inwardness.

This page intentionally left blank

Four PROPORTION I now shift to discussion of the relation of inwardness to outwardness, where the moral importance of inwardness mainly lies. First, I will discuss the relation between inwardness and outwardness as a balance or imbalance between the two. Then I will address ways in which inwardness and outwardness influence each other. The consequences for morality will become apparent in the following chapters where I consider juxtaposing the two. Inwardness influences the goodness of a life. Escapism, alienation, or disengagement from the world affects the course of a life. Whether the influence is for the better or the worse depends on the person and context. Usually escapism and alienation do not make for a good life. If the surroundings and its influence are vicious, separateness, even as alienation or escapism, might make the best of it. Disengagement under those circumstances might allow for a degree of independence, and might minimize bad influence. Stephen Dedalus’s silence, exile, cunning—strategies of alienation—were the artist’s selfprotection. If we take them as applying to James Joyce himself, they made possible the writing of Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922), and Finnegan’s Wake (1939). On the other hand, the alienation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s underground man is unlikely to lead to anything but a sterile, permanent, adolescent rebellion. Inwardness in itself, then, affects the goodness of our lives. A larger issue is the influence on our lives of the proportion between inwardness and outwardness. Some lives and some moments in lives lean heavily toward inwardness or toward outwardness. Even such lives and moments are never given wholly to only one of the two directions for attention. The issue is imbalance, not unmixed inwardness or outwardness. Separateness, being apart from the world, cannot entirely exclude the world. The escapist still must buy groceries and pay the rent. His fantasies are made of etiolated and rearranged fragments of the world. The child’s loss of unproblematic communion with her parents prompts her to examine them the more intently for their sudden remoteness. On the other side, the engaged doctor or a ravenous Tamburlaine must have times of fatigue and withdrawal. Some mix of inwardness and outwardness is also evident in privacy. Attention to the world is never without some privacy. No matter how strongly a person yearns to catch a streetcar, his body will be present to him. The beating of his heart and his sucking for breath while chasing it are not far in the background. Nor can the forms of privacy avoid leakage from the world. The world’s objects infiltrate and accompany privacy. The actions of which I sense

52

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

myself the source are responses to, and issue in, the world. Many of the limits I sense are in the world. If I cannot be another person, or be in another place, that other person and that place are in the world. Some inwardness and some outwardness are always present, even when their proportions are unbalanced. To speak of a balance between inwardness and outwardness is to speak of enough inwardness and enough outwardness, and of an appropriate proportion between the two. Enough for what? What proportion is appropriate? No precise answer or exact formula exists. The point is that proportion is important, and deserves attention. In general, inwardness and outwardness should be in balance, but not to counter or neutralize each other. What is enough and appropriate will partly depend on the individual and the context. The kinds of answers will emerge in this and subsequent chapters. The example of religious conversion introduced in chapter three will illustrate how balance works in particular contexts. Consider the scenario from the husband’s perspective. One evening, when his wife comes home from work, she is quieter, more withdrawn than usual. After dinner, she tells her husband that she is going for a walk, and kisses him affectionately. He thinks of suggesting that he accompany her, but decides not to. She normally does ask him (and he, her), and is obviously pleased to have his company, but she has not asked this time. Nor does she seem to be in a mood to attend to another’s train of thought. He smiles and wishes her a good walk. While his wife is gone, the husband thinks about what might be preoccupying her. He is tempted to refer it to himself: is she upset with him? Nothing had happened between them since morning. Her parting kiss was untroubled and even edged with lust, and that would not have been the case if she were annoyed with him. Nor would she then have sought the solitude of a walk. Problems were not out of the question between them, but he usually was able to detect them. She would have raised any problem herself, not leave him to wonder. Nor was it likely that her preoccupation had to do with her job. Her standing there was fine, the organization stable, and the work both routine and pleasant. It had been years since she had brought work-related concerns home with her. Most likely, the man’s wife was thinking about her conversion. He knew the conversion occupied her thoughts and that it was a serious issue for her. She seemed preoccupied just now, not worried, anxious, or fearful, which might have been the case if she had received bad news. She had been thinking about converting for months. Why would it preoccupy her noticeably this evening? Perhaps she was nearing a decision. The husband wanted to help, but he had to limit the help he provided. He had less knowledge of the religious practices than did his wife, since professionally she had been in contact with the religious community for years. Because she had to make a decision, she was more active than he in exploring

Proportion

53

the religious practices. What he could supply was the perspective of another person, someone familiar with her and her situation, and committed to her well-being. But he could not interfere with the process by which she worked toward a decision. Although he would be gratified if she did, he could not press her to convert. It would be an adventure for them to share (they were already sharing it), to add to their other adventures together, such as eros and parenthood. But establishing her religious identification was an individual matter, to be made as independently as possible of personal and social pressures. It was up to her to consider his desires by herself, undistorted by any direct pressure from him. He could help her by adding to her perspective; he could not reduce her sense of responsibility for making the decision for herself. As it comes time for the man’s wife to return from her walk, her husband is prepared to listen, to offer his religious experience for her to compare with hers. He would also offer for her consideration issues, pro or con conversion, which she might miss. But he recognizes his limitations. Neither he nor she could assume that his experience was entirely congruent to hers. The husband could help his wife toward conversion in one way that would not constitute pressure, a way that had little to do with anything he might say to her. He knew that one of her concerns was continuity. If she decided to convert, it could not be repudiation of her heritage or of her earlier life. The help he could provide was in the continuity each of them supplied to the other. He knew her before and after the religious question arose. They had lived together for decades, they had uncounted common memories, and other memories each could fill in for the other. They shared the raising of their children, where they had lived or visited, the people they had known, the books they had read. They had a multitude of experiences together. His life and his presence confirmed her continuity, with or without her conversion. Yet, it could still be that the wife’s preoccupation was about something else, that he had followed out his chain of thoughts about the prospective conversion too far. He had to remain open to other possibilities, including ones he had not even considered. Should he reproach her (with a smile) for leaving him to guess what was on her mind? But she would come to it soon enough, and she would know he knew she would come to it, and that he knew that if it was something dire, say a health problem, or bad news from one of the children, she would have told him right away . . .. For this husband, inwardness and outwardness are in balance. The balance is not perfect, perfection being unattainable and beside the point, but the balance is enough. He is thinking about his wife—outwardness—but he has the resources of his inwardness to draw on in thinking about her. He understands her sense of agency, limits, subjectivity, concern for continuity, bodily sensations, by being aware of these things in himself. He is, then, a reference point for considering the issue of proportion between inwardness and outwardness.

54

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

With him in mind, I will compare the conception of balance outlined here to some conceptions offered by Aristotle, Søren Kierkegaard, Jean Piaget, and David Hamlyn. These writers provide perspective by offering conceptions of balance other than between inwardness and outwardness. Then I will examine the thoughts of some philosophers on the particular question of proportion between inwardness and outwardness. A sort of balance is inherent in Aristotle’s principle that virtue is a state intermediate between extremes (1985, 1106a27 passim) The virtue of courage, for instance, is intermediate between the extremes of excessive confidence, which is rashness, and insufficient confidence, which is cowardice (ibid., 1107a35–b4). Like balance here, what is virtuous, for Aristotle, depends on the person, “Relative to us the intermediate is what is neither superfluous nor deficient; this is not one, and is not the same for everyone (ibid., 1106a32–33). For a trained athlete, six pounds of food might be too little, but for a beginner it would be too much (ibid., 1106b1–5). Balance between inwardness and outwardness differs from Aristotle’s virtuous mean in several ways. Aristotle’s balance is not between inwardness and outwardness. Aristotle’s individual directs both insufficient and excessive confidence and the virtuous mean, courage, toward the world. The same is true of Aristotle’s other means and extremes. They are all out outward. Aristotle’s balance avoids extremes, which are vicious. If inwardness and outwardness are “extremes,” instead of avoiding them, we need enough of each. The husband I have described has enough inwardness and enough outwardness. He has outwardness, to attend intently to his wife. He has inwardness, so that he can apply to her what he senses in himself of limits, agency, subjectivity, continuity, bodily sensations. He has some Aristotelian excellences, friendship and generosity, but they are permeated by something not in Aristotle: inwardness. It helps to make his life good, by adding a dimension to their marriage. What would a mean be, between inwardness and outwardness? What would attention be on, if it were not either inward or outward, or both? No object is intermediate between the world and self. A retreat from either extreme would merely be a negation or dilution of attention in any direction. Perhaps this would be a form of separateness, but nothing so intense as alienation or isolation, and with no corresponding privacy. It would be a minimal existence. Aristotle provides a rule for identifying the virtues, in terms of a sort of balance. If we follow the rule, a good life is likely. Although the balance between inwardness and outwardness described here has some benefits, the primary importance of balance is beyond balance itself. The main importance of balance is as a condition for developing such attributes as self-knowledge, knowledge of others, and sympathy. For that, we need more than balance alone. We need to juxtapose inwardness and outwardness.

Proportion

55

In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard describes extremes of infinitude and finitude and of freedom and necessity. The task of the self is to become itself. “But to become oneself is to become concrete. But to become concrete means to become neither finite nor infinite, for that which is to become concrete is a synthesis” (1954, p. 162). If, for instance, I lack finitude, I am “infinitized,” in that my feeling becomes “fantastic.” I am lost in sentimentality over abstractions. On the other hand, if infinitude is lacking, I become too finite; I am meanly wise in the ways of the world, and lost in the crowd (ibid., pp. 164–167). Kierkegaard’s synthesis is not a balance and juxtaposition that maintains the extremes. Instead the synthesis avoids the dangers of each. By contrast, I believe that we need extremes. No mean exists between inwardness and outwardness, only a combination of the two in some proportion. Another difference from my account is that Kierkegaard’s conception of a good life is religious. He states that “the conscious synthesis of infinitude and finitude . . . [is] . . . a task which can be performed only by means of a relationship to God” (ibid., p. 162). My account is set in terms of such particulars as marriage, family, work, art, social and political life, and physical existence. The husband and his preoccupied wife are an instance of such particulars. While a religious question is on her mind, my focus is on the relation between two people, not between the woman and God. Kierkegaard’s balance can make little of such relations. The synthesis of which he speaks is in the relation of the subject to God. It has little to do with other people, as the husband, in his balance of inwardness and outwardness, thinks about his wife. For Kierkegaard, given people’s hiddenness from each other, human relation or communication is next to impossible. Finally, to what extent Kierkegaard’s extremes are assimilable to inwardness and outwardness is unclear. That he is aware of the inward/outward contrast is apparent from other writings, but I do not know how he would relate that contrast to infinitude/finitude or freedom/necessity. These comparisons suggest that the notion of balance has some precedents. A key difference is that Aristotle and Kierkegaard seek to avoid the extremes. I believe that we need to maintain both inwardness and outwardness as such, but in balance, so that each direction for attention is available, and so that they we can juxtapose the two. We can also distinguish this balance from the notion of equilibrium (which, etymologically, is synonymous with balance) posed by Jean Piaget. According to Piaget, perception, habit, insight, and judgment structure the relations between an organism and the environment. When the organism achieves a satisfactory structuring, stasis occurs, which Piaget calls equilibrium. Equilibrium can be upset, at which point we need a new equilibrium. Equilibrium is a temporarily satisfactory structuring of an organism’s relation to the world. The desired state is intelligence, “a generic term to indicate the

56

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

superior forms of organization or equilibrium of cognitive structurings” (1960, p. 7). Piaget’s equilibria are stages in the development of intelligence. The proportion of inwardness to outwardness varies with the situation. One may be emphasized, then the other, then the first again. The proportion is not constant enough to be an element of character in itself. What may be stable is a pattern of the relation of inwardness to outwardness, as a person shifts from one situation to another. Nor does the proportion change in a single direction during the course of a life, as the development of intelligence is supposed to do in children. Piaget’s equilibrium is a facet of outwardness, characterizing how an individual models the outside world to adapt to it. Inwardness can contribute to such structurings of the world (see chap. 6), but in itself does not focus on the world. David Hamlyn recommends a balance that is closer to the conception offered here. He argues that being objective about ourselves is not enough. Too much concentration on having information about ourselves, “on making explicit the reasons for our actions[,] must inevitably involve a kind of detachment from oneself . . .” (1983, p. 260). An individual must also be committed to him or herself; “be involved in oneself” (ibid., p. 262); be oneself. Having information about myself, which is reflexive, and which involves knowing how I am in the world, must be balanced by being myself. Hamlyn’s being myself seems aligned with inwardness. Being myself is close to being present to myself, and being present to myself can be described in terms of the forms of privacy: sensing myself as a separate being, sensing my subjectivity, agency, limits. I will expand on this point further in chapter five. But Hamlyn provides a precedent that has some tangential relation to the notion of a balance between inwardness and outwardness. 1. Benefits I have compared the balance pursued here to different kinds of balance offered by Aristotle, Kierkegaard, Piaget, and Hamlyn. I will briefly add to the description of balance by noting some immediate benefits of balancing inwardness and outwardness. They are variety, relief, and perspective. Balance contributes to the variety of our experience. The distinction between inwardness and outwardness is a major one that we can use to broadly categorize all experience. A life deficient either in inwardness or in outwardness will lack variety in a fundamental way, although it may have other kinds of variety. The doctor-sister’s life has external variety, but without inwardness, she misses an entire side of experience. Her escapist brother’s life is more obviously lacking in variety. Another benefit of balance is that the ability to vary the direction of my attention may offer relief from tedium and fatigue. If I am tired or bored with

Proportion

57

dwelling on my bodily sensations or on separateness, engaging the world is likely to be more of a relief than is dwelling on my limits or continuity. Perspective is a third benefit of balance. Among several dictionary definitions of “perspective,” two are useful here. One is the “capacity to view things in their true relations or relative importance.” The other is “the appearance to the eye of objects in respect to their relative distance and positions.” We must discount the visual element in these definitions, in accord with the earlier warning, in chapter three, that while spatial metaphors are unavoidable, they should not be taken literally. I am not discussing objects in space, but the direction of thoughts. The key terms are “relations,” “relative importance,” “relative distance and positions.” To have perspective is to be able to locate and compare things. A balance between inwardness and outwardness can contribute to this ability. We need to step back, distance ourselves, in order to have perspective on something. Inwardness provides a “place” to step back to from the world. The alternative is to be so surrounded and engaged as to lack perspective. We do not so much view the world in an inward state of mind as we achieve perspective in shifting from inwardness toward the world, and from the world toward inwardness. We gain perspective by carrying with us an awareness of both, whichever way we engage our attention. Outwardness provides a “place” for stepping away from inwardness. I loom large to myself in inwardness. But others are in the world. Outwardness helps to place myself in perspective, as one among many others. A balance between inwardness and outwardness is not essential because we can also gain perspective from one aspect of the world on another. Antony and Cleopatra provides perspective on love from the vantage point of power, on power from the vantage of love. Inwardness is not the only way to gain perspective, but adds to it. This is not to say that a good life is impossible without perspective. Nor is it to say, even, that balance is always good. Unbalanced outwardness in dedication to a beneficial cause may make a life good. Perspective and balance can, and usually do, make a life better. A balance between inwardness and outwardness can contribute significantly to achieving perspective. 2. Imbalance We have seen that Aristotle and Kierkegaard recommend some kinds of balance for good lives. Piaget offers “equilibrium,” another sort of balance. These versions of balance bear little or uncertain relation to the proportion between inwardness and outwardness. Hamlyn’s notion of balance, that we should both be ourselves and know ourselves, broaches the topic, but he does not work out the specifics and the implications, as I do here. Considering several philosophers’ positions on proportion between inwardness and out-

58

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

wardness will help to move toward that goal. I do not explicate each philosopher’s complete argument because I do not intend to argue with each. Instead, at the risk of making overly sweeping generalizations, I categorize them according to their emphasis on either inwardness or outwardness, and then comment on them collectively, stating some observations about proportion, and showing that the current account differs from them in an important way. On first look, Kierkegaard seems to lean heavily toward inwardness, in the form of awareness of himself as subject. Some of the titles and subtitles in Concluding Unscientific Postscript suggest a preoccupation with subjectivity, for example, “HOW THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL MUST BE QUALIFIED IN ORDER THAT THE PROBLEM MAY EXIST FOR HIM”; “The Task of Becoming Subjective. The conclusion that would be forced upon ethics if the attainment of subjectivity were not the highest task confronting a human being . . .”; “The Subjective Truth, Inwardness; Truth Is Subjectivity”; “Real or Ethical Subjectivity—The Subjective Thinker”; “The Simultaneity of the Individual Factors in the Existing Subject . . .”; and “The Subjective Thinker—his Task, his Form, his Style” (Kierkegaard, 1941/1846, pp. 8–9). Citing titles is superficial, and useful only if Kierkegaard means by “subjectivity” what the term means here. Here, subjectivity pertains to one pole in the subject-object relation. Awareness of myself as subject is a form of inwardness. Kierkegaard means by subjectivity the quality of an individual’s passion. What matters to him is whether the individual is passionate, how passionate, what kind of passion. Kierkegaard distinguishes between two ways in which we can consider the question of truth, the objective and the subjective way: Let us take as an example the knowledge of God. Objectively, reflection is directed to the problem of whether this object is the true God; subjectively, reflection is directed to the question whether the individual is related to a something in such a manner that his relationship is in truth a God-relationship. . .. (Ibid., pp. 178–179) At the instant that the existing individual chooses the subjective way, “he has God, not by virtue of any objective deliberation, but by virtue of the infinite passion of inwardness” (ibid.). Now when the problem is to reckon up on which side there is most truth, whether on the side of one who seeks the true God objectively, and pursues the approximate truth of the God-idea; or on the side of one who, driven by the infinite passion of his need of God, feels an infinite concern for his own relationship to God in truth . . .: the answer cannot be in doubt for anyone who has not been demoralized with the aid of science. If one who lives in the midst of Christendom goes up to the

Proportion

59

house of God, the house of the true God, with the true conception of God in his knowledge, and prays, but prays in a false spirit; and one who lives in an idolatrous community prays with the entire passion of the infinite, although his eyes rest upon the image of an idol: where is there most truth? The one prays in truth to God though he worships an idol; the other prays falsely to the true God, and hence worships in fact an idol. (ibid., pp. 179–180) Kierkegaard encapsulates, “The objective accent falls on WHAT is said, the subjective accent on HOW it is said” (ibid., p. 181). The HOW is the passion with which the WHAT is said. The task is to become subjective, in the passion of the infinite. My premise is that inwardness depends on the direction of passion or of any other form of attention: is it toward or away from the world? The emphasis on passion alone would not make Kierkegaard inward, unless he were to specify the direction of the passion, away from the world. But he detaches the quality of passion from its fit with its object, and this suggests separateness. If the object of my passion is an idol, the idol is in the world. In that sense, my attention is outward. But an idol is an unworthy object. This does not matter to Kierkegaard as much as does the passion. That my passion’s fit with its object matters less than the passion per se opens a chasm of separateness between me and the world. What Kierkegaard says in other places confirms his tendency toward separateness. Recall the hiddenness of the knight of faith and the virtual impossibility of human communication when we hide and when others are or can be behind masks, and we cannot know when the masks are up and when they are down. Kierkegaard’s inwardness has the form of privacy when he anticipates his death. Despite knowing about death in the third person, death as a topic, “I can by no means regard death as something I have understood” (ibid., p. 148). Knowing the causes of death, knowing the opinions of others about death, knowing of tragic deaths, comic deaths, funeral customs, becoming learned about death, does not help with my death. He says: Before I pass over to universal history . . . it seems to me that I had better think about this, lest existence mock me, because I had become so learned and highfalutin that I had forgotten to understand what will some time happen to me as to every human being—sometime, nay, what am I saying: suppose death were so treacherous as to come tomorrow! (Ibid., p. 148) The sense of my death as my limit, and uncertainty about when it will come— as opposed to death “in general,” as a topic of discussion—is an aspect of inwardness as privacy. He continues:

60

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY Nor am I for myself such a something in general, although perhaps for others I may be a mere generality. But if the task of life is to become subjective, then every subject will for himself become the very opposite of such a something in general.” (Ibid., p. 149) [O]ne must distinguish between [death’s] actual presence and the thought of it. (Ibid., p. 151)

The anticipation of death, not as a topic in general, not in the third person, but in the first person, as mine, my limit, is a form of privacy. Linking my anticipation of my death with the task of my life, to become subjective, involves a powerful current of privacy. Aristotle, in contrast, shows little awareness of inwardness. The goodness of individual lives depends on the polis, which is the key to training young people for good lives, and the realm in which a life can be lived well. The polis is where citizens develop the virtues, where virtues are given scope, and enacted. Aristotle’s good life is social and political. We see Aristotle’s failure to recognize inwardness in his treatment of friendship. He conflates how a person is with a friend with how a person is with self. I hold that inwardness can only be a relation I have with myself. In a way, inwardness is not a relation at all, if a relation is between two separate things. Recall that inwardness is distinct from reflexiveness. Reflexiveness often circles into the world and turns back again on itself, to say how I am from the perspective of the world. In this, reflexiveness is similar to my relation to others; reflexively or with others, I move through the world. Inwardness stays within, not as a location, but as a direction for my attention. A friend, no matter how close, since the friend is outside of me, cannot be the object of my inward attention. The friend cannot be myself and cannot be related to me as I am to myself; the friend is in the world. The only way in which a friend and I could be the same to me would be if the self were “transcendent” and posited as one more object in the world, as Jean-Paul Sartre argues. As shown in chapter one, this is untenable as a basis for morality. In inwardness, I am in myself. My attention is away from the world. I and myself are not separable. Aristotle misses this. Aristotle lists five “defining features of friendship that are found in friendships to one’s neighbours [that] would seem to be derived from features of friendship towards oneself” (1985, 1166a1). He describes each feature as it occurs in true friendship, and claims, “[e]ach of these features is found in the decent person’s relation to himself. . .” (ibid., 1166a10). Aristotle concludes: The decent person, then, has each of these features in relation to himself, and is related to his friend as he is to himself, since the friend is another

Proportion

61

himself . . .. Is there friendship towards oneself, or is there not? Let us dismiss that question for the present. However, there seems to be friendship in so far as someone is two or more parts. This seems to be true from what we have said, and because an extreme degree of friendship resembles one’s friendship to oneself. (Ibid., 1166a30–37) Then he adds: [I]t is said we must love most the friend who is most a friend . . .. But these are features most of all of one’s relation to oneself; and so too are all the other defining features of a friend, since we have said that all the features of friendship extend from oneself to others . . .. All proverbs agree with this too, e.g. speaking of “one soul,” “what friends have in common,” “equality is friendship” . . .. For all of these are true most of all in someone’s relations with himself, since one is a friend to himself most of all. Hence, he should also love himself most of all. (Ibid., 1168b2–7) Aristotle says again that your friend “is another yourself” (ibid., 1169b6). And, “The excellent person is related to his friend in the same way as he is related to himself, since a friend is another himself” (ibid. 1170b6–7). Recognition of inwardness is missing from the notion that a friend is another yourself: separateness is left out, as is sensing my separateness, subjectivity, continuity, agency, limits, bodily sensations, unity. I can posit these things of another, say of a friend, but I cannot directly share another’s sense of these things, a friend’s inwardness. I may know what a friend’s bodily sensations are like, since I have had similar bodily sensations myself, but I cannot have the friend’s bodily sensations. By missing inwardness entirely, Aristotle conflates friend with self and considers a friend another oneself. We have seen that Kierkegaard leans strongly toward inwardness. Aristotle leans strongly toward outwardness. Continuing this survey of philosophers on proportion between inwardness and outwardness, Augustine of Hippo belongs on the side of inwardness. For him, God is all important, and the way to God is within. Addressing God in the Confessions, he writes, “you were more inward than my inmost self” (1960, p. 84). Charles Taylor interprets Augustine, saying, “God is behind the eye, as well as the One whose Ideas the eye strives to discern . . .. He is found in the intimacy of my self-presence” (1989, p. 136). God is implicated in and makes possible my subjectivity (“behind the eye”). The self-presence, which God is in, can be closely identified with inwardness. The identification of selfpresence with inwardness is further developed in chapter five of this work.

62

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

For René Descartes, too, inwardness outweighs outwardness. In the Meditations, he seeks to achieve certainty by discarding whatever we can doubt in any way. Descartes applies himself “to the general demolition of [his] opinions” (1988, p. 76). The world outside me is dubitable. Since the senses—which are outward, their objects being of the world—can deceive, I cannot rely on them, nor on the sciences that depend on them. Finally, Descartes supposes that the universe is not ruled by God. Instead, “some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me” (ibid., p. 79). I must, therefore, doubt everything. But if I am being deceived, I undoubtedly exist. My account of inwardness suggests an interpretation of Descartes’ argument. Descartes describes an interplay between sensing separateness and sensing subjectivity. The supposition that the world is the imposition of a malicious demon is the utmost in feeling separate: all I have is “in here.” But what do I have “in here”? I have the state of being a subject, of doubting, of suffering total deception. This state leaves me with the one certainty. If I am a subject, I exist as a subject. Reliable knowledge only proceeds (through a series of steps that I will not follow here) from this foundation, of separateness and subjectivity. In this way, for Descartes, inwardness takes precedence over outwardness. This logical precedence is universal; it applies to everyone. The “I” of the Meditations is everyman. While Aristotle’s account of morality is outward, and Augustine, Descartes, and Kierkegaard lean heavily toward inwardness, some of the most prominent philosophers of the twentieth century return to an emphasis on outwardness. These include writers as diverse as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sartre, Stuart Hampshire, and Iris Murdoch. Wittgenstein includes the following in the Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, “[T]here is no such things as the soul—the subject, etc. . . .” (1922, 5.5421); “The thinking, presenting subject; there is no such thing” (ibid. 5.631); and, “Of the will as the subject of the ethical we cannot speak” (ibid. 6.423). My purpose here is not to analyze Wittgenstein’s argument, but to suggest that he denies just what I have described as forms of inwardness: sensing my subjectivity and agency. According to him, such privacy is a misunderstanding. We are, we must be, outward. In a later note, Wittgenstein reverses the Cartesian precedence of inwardness over outwardness (1988). Our knowledge of self must come from a public language and from reference to others. We observe what others say and do in the public realm and internalize it, referring it to ourselves. As I will show in chapter six of this work, this is inadequate to account for inwardness, but for my purposes here, in a context quite different from that of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein’s emphasis is on outwardness. That all is outward is a point of continuity between Wittgenstein early and Wittgenstein late.

Proportion

63

Sartre’s case for the transcendence of the ego denies the possibility of inwardness. Everything, including “myself,” is “out there,” in the world; there is no “in here.” Sensing my separateness, subjectivity, and so on, apart from the world is illusory. Consciousness is defined by its objects. Awareness does not exist, apart from awareness of something in the world. Inwardness is merely a confused form of outwardness. For Sartre, in The Transcendence of the Ego, the proportion between inwardness and outwardness tips all the way toward outwardness: There is no longer an “inner life” . . . because there is no longer anything which is an object and which can at the same time partake of the intimacy of consciousness. Doubts, remorse, the so-called “mental crises of consciousness,” etc,—in short, all the content of intimate diaries— become sheer performance. (1960, pp. 93–94) Hampshire’s approach is less metaphysical and more psychological than Sartre’s, but it too leaves little room for inwardness. He would have us be reflexive and introspective in the extreme, but that kind of focus on self is not inwardness. For Hampshire, the need is to gain clarity about ourselves, in thorough awareness of our actions, motives, and choices. The goal is to become a free and responsible agent, who “at all times knows what he is doing . . . and acts with a definite and clearly formed intention” (1959, p. 177). Pursuing such a goal requires a high degree of reflexiveness and introspection, but not inwardness. That Hampshire places little value on inwardness is clear from his dismissal of thoughts, of what goes on in the mind, if they do not issue into the world directly, in action or expressed judgment. He repeatedly asserts that thoughts not immediately preliminary to actions or expressed judgments are, “shadows” and “vague velleities or idle hopes” (ibid., pp. 159–165). In the current work, inwardness is a tendency of thought. In and of itself inwardness has little direct and immediate issuance in action or judgment. Inward thoughts are just those (as opposed to outward ones) least likely to have such a relation to action. In themselves, they are apart or shrink from the world where action occurs. Hampshire has little place for inwardness. Murdoch takes issue with Hampshire on several counts which will be discussed more fully in chapter five of this work. Although she argues against his denigration of thoughts per se, she, too, leans to outwardness. Her husband, the literary critic John Bayley, suggested the nature of her outwardness: Iris once told me that the question of identity had always puzzled her. She thought she herself hardly possessed such a thing, whatever it was. I said that she must know what it was like to be oneself, even to revel in the consciousness of oneself, as a secret and separate person—a person

64

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY unknown to any other. She smiled, was amused, looked uncomprehending. (1999, p. 64)

Bayley describes the dementia Murdoch suffered toward the end of her life. In this passage, he recalls a conversation from before dementia’s onset. He speculates that her prior blankness about personal identity made dementia, when it did come on, untroubling to her. The “identity” Bayley was putting to her, and which she found unfathomable, is quite consistent with the notion of inwardness developed here. Murdoch’s attitude also squares well with her account of morality, especially her emphasis on, “patient, loving regard, directed upon a person, a thing, a situation” (ibid., p. 40), which I will discuss in chapter five. Murdoch values thoughts highly, even if they never issue in the world. As such, she allows room for inwardness that Hampshire does not. Thoughts simply as thoughts, though, are not inward. What matters is the direction of the thoughts, whether they are about the world, and outward, or apart from the world, and inward. Murdoch only recognizes outward thoughts. I divide the philosophers included in this brief survey into two groups according to the criterion of the proportion of inwardness and outwardness, recognizing that other criteria might sort them differently. Those on the same side for proportion may be there for different reasons. I group them as I have in order to make some general observations about proportion, and to show how my account differs from all these writers in an important way. Aristotle is given to outwardness. Then the Christian philosophers, Augustine, Descartes, Kierkegaard, are given to inwardness. In the twentieth century, with Wittgenstein, Sartre, Hampshire, Murdoch, we see a powerful swing toward outwardness. Each philosopher is on one side or the other of proportion. The choice for some is a matter of logical or epistemological necessity. Descartes finds necessity in inwardness, Wittgenstein and Sartre in outwardness. Others press a normative case, of how life should be lived. Kierkegaard and Augustine argue for inwardness, Hampshire for outwardness (with reflexiveness and introspection taking a major part). Neither Aristotle nor Murdoch seems to notice inwardness. For them, inwardness is not a logical, epistemological, or normative issue; they just do not consider it. An exception to these polarizations is David Hamlyn’s general recommendation, that we should both be ourselves and have information about ourselves. Being oneself is necessary to avoid the dangers of excessive objectivity about oneself. But Hamlyn does not pursue the possibilities of juxtaposing the two. None of these philosophers’ accounts, with their emphasis on either inwardness or outwardness (or, in Hamlyn’s case, of merely balancing the two), would be adequate to describe the husband’s thoughts about his preoccupied wife. His consideration of her requires a balance and juxtaposition of inwardness and outwardness. His concern is outward and informed both by his outward observation of her and by his reference to his inwardness. Aristotle’s,

Proportion

65

Sartre’s, Hampshire’s, Murdoch’s accounts could not comprehend his ability to call on his inwardness in order to understand and be of assistance to his wife. Augustine’s or Kierkegaard’s accounts could make little of a close relationship, such as marriage, between two human beings. If marriage, of the kind represented by this husband and wife, and many other close relationships, are important elements of good lives, none of these philosophers can give an adequate account of morality. They cannot understand what is involved in living a good life. I decline, therefore, to emphasize either inwardness or outwardness at the expense of the other. Usually balance is desirable. Stopping there would also be simplistic and incomplete. Instead of finding necessity or moral imperative on one side or the other, we should understand the desirable proportion between inwardness and outwardness as contingent. This understanding incorporates individual development and choices, and the vicissitudes of lives. Neither inwardness nor outwardness in itself is better, nor should there be an a priori prescription of one or the other. The best proportion between inwardness and outwardness, beyond some balance, depends on the person and the circumstance. I have indicated some of the benefits to the husband and wife, of his having enough inwardness and enough outwardness. Murdoch provides another instance of the need to avoid an a priori prescription for a particular proportion. Not to sympathize with her “patient, loving regard” is impossible. Still, that regard will not always be appropriate. Sometimes an object will be too trivial. Sometimes fierce self-defense, not patient, loving regard, is in order, for example, for someone living with an abusive spouse, or in a violent, chaotic neighborhood. Instead of a prescription, we need to look more closely at the moral possibilities of the interaction of inwardness and outwardness, at reciprocity between and juxtaposition of the two. Reciprocity will occupy the remainder of this chapter. The fruits of the juxtaposition of inwardness and outwardness will be described in chapters five and six. 3. Reciprocity I have so far emphasized differences between inwardness and outwardness. That is only the first part of the story. The other part is bringing inwardness and outwardness into relations other than opposition or contrast. For example, the two can be mixed. An author writing about separateness might attend inwardly, although his or her purpose, publication, is worldly. Having distinguished inwardness and outwardness, the next step is to show how they can work together in morally important ways. Two such ways are reciprocity and juxtaposition. The relation between inwardness and outwardness is dynamic. Their proportion changes. Each affects the other. Describing this dynamic relation requires recognizing two elements in the proportion. One of the elements is

66

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

quantitative and measurable: the amount of time we spend in each state. The other element is more qualitative: the intensity of our attention in each state. The total amount of time we have is inelastic. The more time primarily in an inward state of mind, the less in an outward state, and vice versa. The element of intensity enriches the issue of proportion. Some people might spend most of their time in outwardness, but their intervals of inwardness can be intense. Moments of outwardness can be intense for some who dwell much in inwardness. A state can be more intense for its rarity and freshness. An analogy might be a tourist who pays little attention to usual surroundings, taking them for granted and dealing with them automatically. In a strange land, the tourist becomes alert, wanting to see and hear everything. Intense inwardness can call forth and increase the intensity of outwardness, and intense outwardness can call forth and increase the intensity of inwardness. A low intensity in one state can diminish the intensity of the other. This dynamic relation between inwardness and outwardness, where the intensity of each becomes an important consideration for the other, is reciprocity. In reciprocity, each contributes to the nature and intensity of the other. Each informs the other and supplies means by which the other can be described and expressed. By such means, we can articulate our experience. With reciprocity, we can balance inwardness and outwardness at high or low intensities. If the intensity of inwardness is high and the intensity of outwardness is low (or vice versa), the resulting imbalance may have deleterious consequences. The benefits of balance already mentioned may be lost, diminished, or made harder to come by. The attributes that are developed by juxtaposing inwardness and outwardness are weakened. If either inwardness or outwardness submerges the other, little is available to juxtapose. Insofar as a good life requires a balance between and juxtaposition of inwardness and outwardness, the intensity of one is likely to limit the intensity of the other. If the intensity of inwardness is at one level, the intensity of outwardness cannot greatly exceed that level, and vice versa, without an imbalance that can worsen the life. The greater intensity of one state permits the greater intensity of the other. The greater the balanced intensity of both, the greater the likely benefits of juxtaposing them. Experience is usually more varied when inward and outward attention both are intense. The differences (and similarities) among objects of attention will be clearer. With intense inwardness and outwardness, relief from tedium and fatigue is more available, and the relief is greater. We have a better chance to develop perspective. The distancing on which perspective depends plays a larger part. If, on the other hand, attention is weak in both directions, experience will be tepid, neutral, with little contrast and variety. Inward experiences will be less distinct. Outward experience will be indistinct as well. The boundary between them will be indistinct. Tedium will be unrelieved because little

Proportion

67

intensity of attention in one direction is relieved by attention in the other direction. All is engulfed in ennui. Perspective is undeveloped. With dilute inwardness and dilute outwardness, the angles from which we focus attention are not far apart. Recall that I have expressed discomfort because we cannot describe inwardness except through spatial metaphors. Comfortable or not, the availability of metaphors derived from the world is what makes it possible to speak about inwardness. Poets are well aware of their dependence on images taken from the world. This is the point of T. S. Eliot’s frequently cited “objective correlative”: The only way of expressing emotion . . . is by finding . . . a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion, such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked. (1972, p. 145) I might take issue with the notion that a given set of external facts, independent of the subject or reader, is the ironclad formula for a particular emotion. But our dependence on the world for expression and communication is indubitable. Rainer Maria Rilke had something similar in mind in the fourth Duino Elegy: “[W]e... don’t know our feeling’s shape, but only that which forms it from outside” (1939, p. 41). That inwardness informs attention to the world is less obvious. For evidence, I stay with Rilke. In a letter, he writes of the Spanish landscape, Toledo, which: pushed this tendency of mine [to transform natural sights into symbols for inner experience] to extremes; because there the external thing itself—tower, mountain, bridge—already possessed the unheard of, unsurpassable intensity of those inner equivalents by means of which it might have been represented. Everywhere appearance and vision came together in the object, in every one of them a whole inner world was exhibited . . .. (Ibid., p.16) Attributing to external objects the possibility of inwardness, imbuing them with something analogous to inwardness, or whatever dimension is perceived by what Rilke calls “vision,” is to say something about them that might not be possible without our inwardness. We must not push this too far. That Rilke’s use of “external” and “inner,” “object” and “inner world” coincides with “outwardness” and “inwardness” as used here is not clear. Enough overlap does seem to exist to suggest reciprocity between inwardness and outwardness in the way each informs and helps express the other. The overlap

68

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

consists partly in the thought that some other sort of attention exists, besides aiming our senses at the world. To avoid a misconception: the reciprocity described here is not any micro-macro relation, a pre-established harmony between self and the world. Nor is it between two people, for instance in the way friends might help each other. Reciprocity here is between a person’s inwardness and the same person’s outwardness. Even within that person, the issue is reciprocal contribution, enhancement, intensification, not harmony, or correspondence between one and the other direction for attention. I have so far made two observations about reciprocity between inwardness and outwardness. One is that, if they are to be in balance, the intensity of one in a positive sense sets limits on and permits the intensity of the other. I say “in a positive sense” because the greater intensity of one, the greater can be the intensity of the other. The second observation is that each direction for attention can express and communicate the other. This is especially true of the need for outwardness in order to discuss inwardness. We can now make a third observation about reciprocity. Inwardness can elicit and intensify outwardness, and outwardness can elicit and intensify inwardness. The husband concerned about his preoccupied wife illustrates this point. We have seen that in the husband, inwardness and outwardness are in balance. Enough is present of each. Beyond balance, we can observe that his inward and outward attention have a reciprocal relation. He is attentive to his wife—outwardness. He interprets what he observes about her in outwardness by reference to his sense of his agency, subjectivity, bodily sensations, limits. His inward sense of these things helps him to understand what is happening with her. He casts this inwardness back out into the world, intensifying and deepening the outwardness with which he thinks about her. The husband’s outwardness also contributes to his inwardness, because his attention to his wife thrusts him into inwardness in his effort to understand her. He understands her subjectivity by reference to his subjectivity, her feeling of responsibility for making choices by reference to his sense of agency, her feeling of aging by how his body feels to him, her sense of limits by his awareness of his limits. What he learns about his wife in this way, her subjectivity, agency, bodily sensations, limits, deepens his sense of these things in himself. His outwardness contributes to his inwardness, which in turn contributes to his outwardness. This illustrates the meaning of reciprocity between inwardness and outwardness. Reciprocity between inwardness and outwardness is important in personal relations. The husband’s inwardness heightens his attention to his wife, who is in the world. His inwardness contributes to his sense of his wife’s inwardness, and in that way to her presence to him. It makes him alert to her. He is, then, likely to be more outwardly observant of her features, expressions, and gestures, and to understand their significance. His attention to her

Proportion

69

also heightens his inwardness. Her presence to him in her inwardness brings him back to his inwardness. Hers is known in part through his outward alertness, in part through his inwardness as a reference for intuiting hers. Her inwardness (and she is in the world), then, brings him back to and confirms his inwardness. It elicits his inwardness as a response, to enable him to sense hers. He finds he is neither alone nor peculiar in being inward. Does such a reciprocal relation between inwardness and outwardness in a person make for a better life? The answer is the same as has been given for some of the immediate benefits of balance: usually, though not necessarily. In this couple, the wife is present to her husband. The satisfactions of marriage are strong for both of them. He benefits her with his self-restraint and with his availability to provide perspective. Intimacy and mutual affection are deep. On the other hand, a husband’s inwardness and outwardness could be balanced, but, in the absence of reciprocity, the balance could consist only in that both are weak, vague, or diffuse. He would have little sense of his wife’s inwardness. Her presence to him would be slight, and he would be little observant of her. Depending on what is happening with her, their marriage might hold, but out of habit or utility. It would be less than satisfying as a marriage. He would benefit her neither with his self-restraint in not forcing his viewpoint on her, nor in his availability to provide perspective for her use. He would fail to restrain himself because he would care about the issue rather than about her relation to the issue. He would not make his perspective available because he would not know she needed it, or would not care if she did. Their relationship would have little intimacy. Their mutual affection would be less a deep current than wisps of mist. The reciprocity described here is within the husband, between his inwardness and his attention to the world. Different kinds of reciprocity occur between two people, a husband and a wife, a salesperson and a customer, a master and a slave. A further role exists for reciprocity between inwardness and outwardness. Experiences and memories, each of which has inward and outward components, populate and color inwardness with specific content. The sense of subjectivity does not stay abstract, but develops with perceptions and is refined in reflecting on the perceptions, in the growth of aesthetic sensitivity, in consulting with others and in seeking to articulate aesthetic and other responses to what we perceive of the world. The sense of agency does not remain abstract either, as in a bald statement, such as, “I sense my agency,” or, “I am responsible for what I do.” My sense of agency is replete with the occasions in which I acted or failed to act in the world, and with the kinds of actions that I took, and is colored by the relations of my past actions to the situations to which I was responding. On those occasions, to varying degrees, I sensed myself as the source of actions. In sensing personal continuity, I bring the actions forward to my current sense

70

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

of agency. I once tried to bully a family member out of drug dependence. Responding to a threat to my child, I went to the police. I did not realize someone was in trouble, and so failed to provide timely help. I legitimately refused to help someone. I nursed a gravely ill relative. I objected to a bad policy at work. I failed to fire an employee who warranted termination. I reprimanded someone who did not deserve it. I fulfilled a promise. I failed to fulfill a promise. All such instances, and the apprehensions, anxieties, aftermaths, and reflections which attend them, involve both attention to the world and inwardness. They give content and context to such statements as, “I sense my agency.” In each instance, the action or failure to act was imbued to varying degrees with my sense of agency and continuity. My sense of agency and continuity had consequences for action. In turn, those consequences now influence my sense of agency. In reciprocity, experiences of the world are charged with the sense of subjectivity, agency, and the other forms of inwardness. As argued against Sartre, an experience is never merely of a streetcar-being-chased. I bring myself, and inwardness, to it. The experience is more than just of the streetcar, because my inwardness enriches it. The relation is reciprocal: the instances of action involving attention to the world deepen my sense of agency, and my sense of agency deepens outwardness. Specific dramas of alienation, such as the girl’s discovery of the gulf between her and her parents, give character to the sense of separateness. These dramas are not abstract. They usually involve alienation in specific situations, and the situations involve outwardness. Separateness is often from something in particular. A person may attend to that something even more for the separateness. The child in the cottage attends intently to her parents—in fear, in dismay—for her sudden separateness. She is more aware of them as outside her than when she took them for granted. She may struggle to adjust two different awarenesses: the old, comfortable sense of their presence taken for granted, and the new realization that leaves her in exile. She may easily take her mother’s hand the next morning when they go for a walk. Then, for no overt reason, she will feel a twinge of the previous evening’s panic when they walk back along a path to their home. The panic dissipates again in the cottage as her father greets them with lunch. That inwardness and outwardness can be mutually enhancing means that a life can take on a spiral of intensification. One direction of attention enhances the other, and thereby is itself enhanced. The spiral can also go downward: one element fails to enhance the other, and as a result, that element itself becomes weaker. In the absence of sexual fulfillment with a partner— outwardness—a person retreats to pornography—escapist separateness—the use of which further disables him for sexual fulfillment with a partner. This increases separateness, and weakens outwardness. Eventually the satisfactions

Proportion

71

of the escapism also become stale and stereotyped, perhaps attended with shame. Such possibilities of both upward and downward spirals raise the moral stakes, and, for better or worse, heighten the drama of a life. What is the nature of that drama? The upward spiral is toward greater intensity in both inwardness and outwardness. The downward spiral is toward less attention. This is morally important. The greater intensity achieved in reciprocity is likely to provide variety, relief, perspective. The greater attention itself, as embodied, according to Rilke’s testimony, in poetry, may well be fulfilling. It also contributes to the attributes made possible by the juxtaposition of inwardness and outwardness. More intense attention does not necessarily result in a better life. If a life goes bad, perhaps for reasons beyond the scope of this account, more intensity may result in a worse life. The following two cases illustrate. In one, fear of death cripples a woman’s life. The fear stems from her sensing her temporal limits and personal continuity. Whatever she does, wherever she goes, her fear taints her experience. Every twinge in her body frightens her. She narrows what she does because she is unwilling to do anything, such as travel or strenuous exercise, which could increase the immediate chance of dying. The fear goes beyond sensing limits as a form of privacy. Her outwardness is juxtaposed with a powerful sense of her temporal limit, continuity, subjectivity, agency, bodily sensations. Her presence to herself is so strongly juxtaposed with her outwardness that emotionally, subconsciously, she associates and confuses the continuation of the world with her perpetuation. She is like a person in a car with a driver whose competence or wakefulness she doubts. She cannot relax. She cannot let herself fall asleep. She believes, subconsciously, that if she dies, the world will cease to exist. In this case, recognition of inwardness and outwardness, and of the reciprocal dynamics between them, helps to understand and describe what is going on. Here, the reciprocity worsens the life. In the second case, a man wreaks havoc on others because of a twisted juxtaposition of intense inwardness and intense outwardness. As a child, he was unable to satisfy his need for power. Accordingly, to alleviate his frustration, he fantasized. This took his attention away from the world, a form of separateness. Being merely fantasies, they were more attenuated than activity in the world. To achieve a measure of satisfaction from them he exaggerated the fantasies in proportion to their attenuation. He dreamed of violent domination. The fantasies of power became sadistic. As he grew, the man gained some ability to juxtapose his inwardness with outwardness. He was able to direct his behavior, to adopt masks and roles, towards his ends in the world. By juxtaposition of inwardness and outwardness, he learned to manipulate weak and vulnerable people. Since his early fantasies had taken too firm a hold, he could not outgrow them. The

72

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

juxtaposition now takes the form of seeking to impose those fantasies on the world, to enact them. With talents the man discovers in himself, a charismatic appearance, and a demagogic ability in front of crowds, he becomes the leader of a cult in which he exercises absolute power over his followers. He overcomes separateness by seeking, through control and the infliction of pain, to make it impossible for them to have thoughts of their own. He fills their minds with his declamations, not only to the exclusion of opposition, but also of anything personal. When in doubt about their thoughts, he ensures that he knows and controls what they are thinking by inflicting pain and fear. When they are in pain, they must think about the pain, when frightened, they must think about what they fear. As the authorities are closing in on him and his cult, in a final act of sadistic control, he has his followers commit mass suicide. In both cases, intense inwardness and intense outwardness are present without making lives good. In the first case, a kind of reciprocity results in a crippled, limited life. In the second, the life is vicious. Reciprocity and juxtaposition do not guarantee a better life. They raise the stakes. The good may be better, the bad worse. Where someone’s proclivities are vicious, it might be better that he remain apart, in escapism and isolation, where he would be less likely to do harm. Whether reciprocity and juxtaposition themselves can turn our proclivities in beneficial directions will be explored in chapter six. But recognition of the possibilities of reciprocity will help to understand what is going on, in good lives and bad. Reciprocal intensification of inwardness and outwardness does not make any decision or establishing the course of a life easier. Decisions are more crucial when stakes are higher. Greater inward and outward attention make us cognizant of more issues and more considerations for any given issue, possibly making decisions and a life better. It could also complicate things, because we become aware of more to consider. Single-minded fanatics are likely to have little difficulty making decisions and setting directions for themselves. If reciprocity does not simplify issues and situations, it does enable us to cope better with difficulty. Attributes such as self-knowledge and knowledge of others, which depend on the juxtaposition of inwardness and outwardness, are enhanced when the two are intensified. We understand situations more fully and are less likely to be surprised by unknown forces and unforeseen events. Reciprocity resulting in more intense inward attention and more intense outward attention makes for a larger life. We are aware of and notice more. We have stronger feelings about what we notice. Each item noticed is placed in a clearer relation to what else we have noticed. Our actions are likely to have outcomes that are more serious. A larger life can involve more satisfaction for us, and greater benefit to others. It also has the potential for deeper dissatisfaction and worse harm.

Proportion

73

Such differences are morally important. Some find a larger life, one passionately attentive to many important things, itself satisfying. Others may find a smaller life better. Still others may not consider the goodness of a life to depend mainly on its scope. By means of reciprocity, the most inward person may be the one who takes most interest in the world. The husband concerned with his cogitating wife is not the most inward person, but he represents the move in that direction. I have provided an account of the relation of inwardness and outwardness taken as a proportion, with some emphasis on the possibilities of reciprocity between the two. The account contains a promise. This is in the assertion that inwardness and its juxtaposition with outwardness is essential to developing several morally important attributes. The attributes are selfknowledge, knowledge of others, and sympathy.

This page intentionally left blank

Five SELF-KNOWLEDGE In this chapter, I address the place of inwardness in self-knowledge, and the role of juxtaposing inwardness and outwardness in gaining self-knowledge. I begin by describing three kinds of self-knowledge: information about oneself; evaluation of oneself; and presence to oneself. I then address three issues: the relation of self-knowledge to freedom; the relation of self-knowledge to action; and the complexity of our lives and thoughts, which self-knowledge needs to consider. Information about oneself is reflexive. It may include information about motives and sensations derived from introspection. Having information about oneself may include other elements. It may be about how I am in the world, or about my motives, gleaned through observations made by others, for example, the writings of psychologists, or remarks made by people who know me. It may arise from my observations of others, rather than through introspection. Should such information about oneself include any facts whatever, or can we omit some items? A criterion that unambiguously includes some and excludes other facts from self-knowledge is unnecessary. We should be concerned with information about ourselves that is important. This claim is trivial. What is not trivial is that the importance of information is not independent of the individual and the situation. Information of concern is what pertains to a person’s character, the stable major patterns of action, motivation, thoughts, and feelings, and to the goodness of a life. These vary from person to person, situation to situation. Later I will emphasize the complexity of people’s lives and thoughts. No simple way exists to sort out a priori what will rise to importance, and what will not, without reference to the person and context. Inwardness is a characteristic of a self, so it may be the object of selfknowledge. We may have information about our experience of separateness, continuity, subjectivity, and other forms of inwardness. Having that information, as an awareness of our inwardness, adds a dimension to inwardness. The separateness of the girl in the cottage reached its fruition in her recognition of it. We attain much of this sort of information through introspection. We also need outwardness, to allow us to compare our state of mind to that of others. The survey of philosophers in chapter four, for example, provides a basis for comparisons on the question of proportion between inwardness and outwardness. We can place ourselves in the spectrum such a survey offers. Inwardness has a role in gaining information about myself. We have seen that a balance between inwardness and outwardness is a source of perspective.

76

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

To have perspective is to be able to locate and compare things. Locations and comparisons may be important to securing information about myself. Especially useful for perspective on myself is the ability to sense my actions and myself in inwardness while I also perceive myself as I am in the world. Another element of self-knowledge, beside description, is evaluation. We judge what we describe; we place value on what a description reveals about ourselves. John Kekes and Charles Taylor emphasize this element. Kekes speaks of self-knowledge as having both a descriptive aspect and an interpretive aspect that is “inescapably evaluative” (1995, pp. 118–121). The second aspect involves both a determination of the significance of the facts, and approval and disapproval: Through interpretation, we judge, therefore, not merely that some facts about us are significant or insignificant, but also that they are significant and shameful, just as others may be significant and admirable. The interpretation involved in self-knowledge should be seen therefore as yielding both favorable and unfavorable evaluations. (Ibid., p. 120) Since the interpretations are evaluative, Kekes says, they are motivational. They guide actions. I will return to this point, the relation of self-knowledge to motivation and action, later. Charles Taylor, in his paper, “Responsibility for Self,” provides a forceful discussion of the evaluative aspect of self-knowledge (Taylor, 1976, pp. 281–299). He starts with a distinction of Harry Frankfurt’s between first and second order desires (1988/1971). First order desires are what we usually think of as desires: to satisfy an appetite, to be famous, to alleviate another’s suffering. Second order desires are what we want ourselves to want. We might, for instance, not want to covet fame. Second order desires can involve either weak or strong evaluations. In weak evaluations, Taylor says, we seek the best mix for ourselves, so as “to get the most over-all satisfaction” (Taylor, 1976, p. 282). If weak evaluation tends to the quantitative, strong evaluation is qualitative. With strong evaluation, we judge desires in contrasts, good or bad, worthy or unworthy, virtuous or vicious, profound or superficial, and in other similarly “moral” terms. Strong evaluation aims at the kind of person I want to be. I may eschew base or vicious acts that are inconsistent with the kind of person I want to be. In the strong evaluator, self-knowledge in its interpretive, evaluative aspect has a central, active role: [O]ught I to re-evaluate my most basic evaluations? Have I really understood what is essential to my identity? Have I truly determined what I sense to be the highest mode of life? This kind of re-evaluation will be

Self-Knowledge

77

radical . . . in the sense that our looking again can be so undertaken that in principle no formulations are considered unrevisable. (Ibid., p. 296) This radical evaluation is a deep reflection, and a self-reflection in a special sense: it is a reflection about the self, its most fundamental issues, and a reflection which engages the self most wholly and deeply. Because it engages the whole self without a fixed yardstick it can be called a personal reflection . . . and what emerges from it is a self-resolution in a strong sense, for in this reflection the self is in question; what is at stake is the definition of those inchoate evaluations which are sensed to be essential to our identity. (Ibid., p. 299) This is too feverish. Taylor admirably illustrates the evaluative aspect of self-knowledge, but overstates the claims of self-evaluation. I cannot build a good life if I am always open to radical questioning and revision of who or what I am. As pointed out in discussing continuity, I need to build on what I have, to meet and expand on commitments made. Changes can occur, but I must base them on what I am. If I must, or at any moment can, radically reexamine what I am, have, or am committed to, I cannot grow and develop. Once married, should I radically reflect on whether the marriage is essential, or whether sensed as the highest mode of life? If a disaster befalls, if my spouse dies, or leaves, or behaves in a grossly destructive way, reflection is due. But short of such a disaster, I ought to build on the marriage, not call it into question. As the case of marriage suggests, others are likely to have some claim in matters that concern me. Taylor writes as if radical self-questioning is an issue for me alone, as if, in a Kierkegaardian vein, others are not involved or affected by what I decide is essential to my identity, and the only business I have is with myself. My spouse or my child or others to whom I have commitments have some claim to an end to the potential revisions. If not, then Taylor’s morality must discard marriage and other ways to live that involve permanent commitments. To pull back from Taylor’s view, to suggest limits to radical selfexamination, and to prescribe taking life both less strenuously and more seriously is not to question evaluation as one of the three essential aspects of selfknowledge. The evaluation usually occurs in relation to the commitments and purposes adopted, instead of to a ready and thorough questioning of my identity. Inwardness has a role in self-evaluation. I may employ the forms of inwardness as categories, criteria, and descriptors by which to interpret my character. Separateness, reserve, alienation, solitariness, disengagement, continuity, subjectivity, agency, unity, limits, bodily sensation are categories into which some objects of self-knowledge can be organized. Bodily sensation, for example, is a category in which I can consider physical pleasure and pain and relate them to other forms of inwardness. Under the category of separateness,

78

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

I can consider my relation to the world: am I alienated, and is the degree of alienation appropriate to the situation? At the same time, I place alienation in the context of the other forms of inwardness, and of balance between inwardness and outwardness. I can ask myself, do I permit myself enough or too much solitude? Under the categories of continuity, agency, and unity, issues of responsibility and integrity arise. This is not to say that we must always employ the forms of inwardness, or that they are “fixed yardsticks.” Nor does it mean that they are the only categories by which self-knowledge can be pursued. For the purpose here, to point to them as some ways, among others, by which we can facilitate judgments of ourselves, ways in which we can think of our lives and ourselves, is enough. The categories are forms of inwardness. To apply them to ourselves, we need to juxtapose inwardness and outwardness, for perspective, comparison, and location. For example, the desire for continuity depends on an existing sense of continuity: a person who sensed his or her continuity would probably try to maintain and enhance it, whereas a person with little sense of continuity might not care. We can extend this idea in varying degrees to other forms of inwardness. We can have desires for the kind of person we want to be in terms of these forms, and can approve or disapprove of ourselves accordingly. The third aspect of self-knowledge, besides information and evaluation, is my presence to myself. We can describe self-presence in terms of the forms of inwardness: the intensity of my presence to myself is the intensity with which I sense my separateness, continuity, subjectivity, agency, limits, bodily sensations, unity. How is self-presence—inwardness—a form of self-knowledge? Reflexiveness and introspection are ways in which a person gains self-knowledge, and I have distinguished inwardness from them. How can we consider inwardness, which is a state of mind that we need not even formulate in words, let alone propositions, to be knowledge at all? David Hamlyn argues, “the blindness to self which comes from overriding attention to other things, with perhaps as a correlate a complete lack of concern for one’s own position in the matter” must not limit self-knowledge (1983, p. 248). For self-knowledge, “one must be neither blind to oneself nor in some sense standing back from or apart from oneself” (ibid., p. 252). Being objective about oneself is not enough. “[S]elf-knowledge can be connected with some kind of commitment to oneself” (ibid., p. 259). Hamlyn covers these concerns under the rubric, to be oneself. “Being Oneself” is the heading of the penultimate section of Hamlyn’s paper (ibid). In that section, he warns against excessive concentration on having information about oneself, “on making explicit the reasons for our actions [that it] must inevitably involve a kind of detachment from oneself . . .” (ibid., p. 260). “One must be involved in oneself” (ibid., p. 262).

Self-Knowledge

79

Self-presence, or inwardness, is central to being me, and to being committed to myself. Self-presence is the anchor by which I attach my information and evaluation to myself, not just in theory, but practically, as deeply felt, and important. In self-presence, information and evaluation are brought together in the realization that my life and myself are at stake. The degree to which I am myself, am involved in, and committed to myself, and to which I embody the opposite of detachment from myself, is the intensity with which I sense my presence. This is different from the reflexive perceiving of myself as object. In sensing my presence, I sense my separateness, continuity, subjectivity, agency, limits, bodily sensations, unity. The intensity of these sensings provides the “tightness” of the attachment of reflexive information and evaluation. I will return to this point in discussing the relation of selfknowledge to action. Why should we consider inwardness, or being oneself, or selfpresence, knowledge at all? Does not knowledge, whether of oneself or anything else, always consist in having information? I have distinguished inwardness from information. Being oneself, being the opposite of detached from oneself, can be knowledge, but is not information. Being oneself is not knowing that I am such-and-such, or that I have such-and-such attributes. Being myself is the knowledge that I am. Well, who does not know that he is? That misses the point. The knowledge that I am is not a proposition or a neutral, quasiscientific statement of fact. It has to do with intensity, the intensity of my presence to myself, which can be explained as the intensity of my sense of separateness, bodily sensations, continuity, subjectivity, agency, limits, unity—inwardness. This is how being myself can be identified with inwardness, as the third element of self-knowledge. Inwardness, then, has a role in each of the elements of self-knowledge. For information, inwardness in balance and juxtaposition with outwardness provides perspective that allows me to compare and locate elements of my character and life. In the second element, inwardness provides categories, criteria, descriptors for evaluating myself. Its juxtaposition with outwardness allows comparisons with others that are important in self-evaluation. Further, inwardness is identifiable with self-presence, the third element of selfknowledge, which anchors information about and evaluation of myself to me so that information and evaluation matter, and make a difference. With this preliminary account of inwardness’s role in self-knowledge in mind, I consider some issues that have exercised philosophers about selfknowledge. The intent is to highlight inwardness’s part in each issue. These are: the relation of self-knowledge to freedom and to control of our character and life; the relation of self-knowledge to action; and the complexity to which self-knowledge must respond.

80

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY 1. Freedom

For Stuart Hampshire, freedom, and control of my life and myself is the desired state, the central condition for living a good life. I achieve freedom through self-knowledge: [I]t is through the various degrees of self-consciousness in action, through more and more clear and explicit knowledge of what I am doing, that in the first place I become comparatively free . . .. A man becomes more and more a free and responsible agent the more he at all times knows what he is doing, in every sense of this phrase, and the more he acts with a definite and clearly formed intention. (1983, p. 177) Neurosis is a lack of freedom. Hampshire’s model for achieving freedom and control is psychoanalysis. We need not agree with his endorsement of Freud to recognize Hampshire’s idea as applicable in a broader “philosophy of action”: A neurotic . . . is a man who is not fully aware of, and will not acknowledge, the real tendency of his own actions . . .. He is constantly acting in such a way as to defeat his own sincerely professed purposes, until he is brought to acknowledge that he was unconsciously trying to achieve something quite different from his professed aims . . .. [H]e did not know what he was all the time “really” trying to do, or that which he was in a sense trying to do. Because he did not know, he can be said to have been governed by forces outside his own control. The recognition and acknowledgment of them opens for him new possibilities of fully self-conscious action . . .. (Ibid, pp. 178–179) Hampshire holds that we should aim at maximum freedom and control over our lives and ourselves. Freedom, if not the single highest good, is the necessary condition of a good life, whatever that life may be. I achieve freedom through clarity about my intentions, actions, and situations—selfknowledge. Psychoanalysis exemplifies the way to the knowledge I need to gain about myself. Iris Murdoch disagrees. Freedom, for her, is not so important, nor is freedom of the sort Hampshire describes attainable, nor, for that matter, is it especially desirable. Moral change and moral achievement are slow; we are not free in the sense of being able suddenly to alter ourselves since we cannot suddenly alter what we can see and ergo what we desire and are compelled by. In a way, explicit choice seems now less important. . . . If I attend properly

Self-Knowledge

81

I will have no choices and this is the ultimate condition to be aimed at. This is in a way the reverse of Hampshire’s picture, where our efforts are supposed to be directed to increasing our freedom by conceptualizing as many different possibilities of action as possible . . .. The ideal situation, on the contrary, is rather to be represented as a kind of “necessity” . . .. The idea of a patient, loving regard, directed upon a person, a thing, a situation, presents the will not as unimpeded movement, but as something very much more like “obedience.” (1970, pp. 39–40) I do not need to adjudicate here between Hampshire and Murdoch. My purpose is to use these opposing accounts to further a consideration of inwardness. Neither Hampshire nor Murdoch says much about inwardness. As a result, each misses something important. Hampshire emphasizes reflexiveness and introspection, to gain clarity about oneself. But reflexiveness and introspection need not involve sensing separateness, continuity, subjectivity. These would be in a category that he dismisses: thought without corresponding action. Murdoch challenges Hampshire’s dismissal of thought without action with an illustration—the case of a mother-in-law (“M”) thinking about her daughter-in-law (“D”). M’s attitude toward D changes drastically, from distaste to warm appreciation, while there is no change in her external behavior, which has always been “beautiful.” “[W]hatever is in question as happening happens entirely in M’s mind” (ibid., p. 17). The point is contrary to Hampshire’s view, that such a change, since it has not issued into the world, is idle musing, and empty. Murdoch argues, “M has . . . been active, she has been doing something, something which we approve of, something which is somehow worth doing in itself” (1970, p. 19). The change, all within M, is morally important. Murdoch is correct. What is going on in M’s mind, without any effect on her behavior, contributes to the goodness of her life. But does this make room for inwardness? The affirmation, that the content of my thoughts is significant per se, is more favorable to a claim for the moral importance of inwardness than is a dismissal of thoughts not issuing in action. Murdoch does not recognize that inwardness is morally important. Direction of attention (not thought as opposed to action) determines inwardness. In Murdoch’s account, M’s attention is outward, toward her daughter-in-law. M is being reflexive and introspective about her feelings about D; that is the basis for striving to think better of her. Her thoughts revolve around D, the person “out there.” What is important to Murdoch is “patient, loving regard, directed upon a person, a thing, a situation . . .” (1970, p. 40). This regard is thought, and important thought, but not inward thought. Patient, loving regard is in the same realm of moral discourse as inwardness. Murdoch places that regard at the center of a good life. We can add

82

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

something to Murdoch’s claim. Inwardness suggests that we can withhold this regard, withhold not just regard for any particular thing, but in general. Further, in describing reciprocity between inwardness and outwardness, I made the case that inwardness can contribute to such regard. We have seen with the husband and his preoccupied wife (chapter four) that patient, loving regard directed upon a person will to a significant degree depend on balance, reciprocity, juxtaposition of inwardness and outwardness. (I will develop this point in chapter six.) Coming to patient, loving regard out of separateness, and an awareness of the contrast between regard and separateness, adds something to the regard. Awareness of outward regard takes on another dimension with an awareness of an alternative to which it can be compared. Recognizing the significance of inwardness and of its juxtaposition with outwardness, then, is an important addition to Murdoch’s claim. Recognizing the significance of inwardness is also an important addition to Hampshire for whom freedom is central. Social independence abetted by inwardness extends freedom. I have more choices when I am less at the mercy of social pressures. To observe myself clearly, I may need the perspective of others, but I also need to be able to observe myself apart from their perspective. They may be wrong. They do not have immediate access to my thoughts and feelings. They may have values different from those on which I judge myself and on which I act. Implicit in choice, besides knowing as much as possible about the alternatives and about ourselves, is the ability to step back. The withdrawal allows us to consider the alternatives. This ability depends in part on inwardness, in its aspect of separateness. In the absence of inwardness, we are in the realm of Sartre’s transcendent ego, in which the world and its objects are a flow of undifferentiated streetcars-having-to-be-overtaken. In such a realm, notions of choice and freedom lose their meaning. We are at the mercy of the world’s flux. Both Hampshire and Murdoch have strong and weak points. My interest is not to choose between them, nor to integrate the two, but to suggest that recognizing inwardness would enhance both. Hampshire, who emphasizes freedom, misses an important element of freedom in dismissing thoughts per se, and in failing to recognize inwardness. Murdoch’s account with its emphasis on obedience in patient, loving (outward) regard, could be developed further by recognizing inwardness, because inwardness can add to or detract from that regard. 2. Action A consideration of the relation of self-knowledge to action will also help to understand the moral importance of inwardness. Knowledge can influence action and effect change. Some writers assume that information alone, or

Self-Knowledge

83

information with the addition of self-evaluation, is enough to move us to action. For instance, Hampshire’s dual emphasis, on achieving clarity about ourselves in awareness of our motives, actions, situation, and on the utter supremacy of action, seems to assume an immediate link between the two. Taylor’s intentness on evaluation is such that action, doing something in response to the evaluation, does not arise as an issue. The heat of strong evaluation implies action. Kekes, who makes a person’s conception of a good life the standard for judgment, explicitly states the relation of evaluation to action: These evaluations . . . are action-guiding. We do not merely take cognizance through them of the truth that some facts about our character aid and others hinder our desire to live a good life. Favorable evaluations reinforce the enduring patterns that constitute our character, while unfavorable ones weaken them. And both commit us to appropriate action. In this way the interpretive aspect of self-knowledge incorporates its descriptive, evaluative, and motivational aspects. (1995, p. 120) The movement from evaluation to action needs a closer look. We may have information about ourselves, and evaluate what it says about us disapprovingly, yet not be moved accordingly to action. Aristotle, for instance, identifies the state of akrásia, or “incontinence”: The continent person seems to be the same as one who abides by his rational calculation; and the incontinent person seems to be one who abandons it. (1985, 1145b10–12) [The incontinent person] acts willingly; for in a way he acts in knowledge both of what he is doing and of the end he is doing it for. But he is not base, since his decision is decent . . .. [O]ne type of incontinent person does not abide by the result of his deliberation . . .. In fact, the incontinent person is like a city that votes for all the right decrees and has good laws, but does not apply them . . .. (Ibid., 1152a17–22) Aristotle finds the relation between knowledge, including evaluation, and action problematic. In “incontinence” the issue is inner conflict, between reason and passion. The knowledge is there, but passion overwhelms it. We can also conceive of a slothful failure of knowledge to surface in action. Self-evaluation does not inevitably rise to the level of motivation. I can disapprove of myself, yet the evaluation remains simply a judgment, either overcome by passion or insufficiently motivating to reach practice. It exists only “in theory.” This can occur in cynicism, but not only there. Like Aris-

84

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

totle’s “incontinent” person, I can sincerely regret the failure, yet not be moved sufficiently to change. Evaluation can, and often does, lead to action. What makes this so, if the relation between information/evaluation and action is contingent? Why is evaluation motivational in some people but not in others, or motivational some times but not other times? People may move from information/evaluation to action in two ways. The Socratic person may rationally determine what is virtuous and proceed rationally to behave in accordance with that determination. In the Protagoras, for instance, Plato’s Socrates describes living a good life as a matter of having knowledge (1961). Making bad choices is the result of ignorance. A person who has knowledge will make the right choices and live a good life. Knowledge cannot be overcome by passion or pleasure or be insufficiently motivating. What may seem to be knowledge overcome is, instead, a lack of knowledge: [I]t is ignorance . . .. [W]hen people make a wrong choice of pleasures and pains—that is, of good and evil—the cause of their mistake is lack of knowledge. We can . . . call it . . . a science of measurement, and . . . a wrong action which is done without knowledge is done in ignorance. (Pl.Protagoras, 357d–e) For Socrates, the virtues constitute a unity. Each virtue is an expression of knowledge, or wisdom, appropriate to a context. In the Phaedo, he depicts a good, virtuous life as the result of a proper science of moral measurement: [I]t is wisdom that makes possible courage and self-control and integrity or, in a word, true goodness, and the presence or absence of pleasures and fears and other such feelings makes no difference at all . . .. (Pl.Phaedo, 69a–b) Socrates takes it that all human beings are rational in this sense. Given the needed knowledge, they will make the right choices, and live good lives. They make wrong choices not from passion, or the desire for an immediate pleasure, but because they are ignorant. They lack the science of measurement. Cure their ignorance and they will live good lives. With sufficient knowledge, especially self-knowledge, they will live by rational deliberation leading to appropriate action. They are the sort whom Kekes would seem to have in mind when he asserts that evaluation with reference to a conception of a good life is ipso facto motivational. This is far from universal, as Aristotle shows in his description of akrásia. People vary in their rationality. Hamlyn recognizes that a lack of motivation can lie at the heart of clarity about oneself. This occurs when concentration on clarity involves a kind of detachment from oneself:

Self-Knowledge

85

It might reasonably be held that a concentration on one’s own doings and the reasons for them may be inhibitory of spontaneity; there would inevitably be an element of rationalization in the process, a rationalization that might well prevent natural and spontaneous reactions to situations . . .. [A] concentration on making explicit the reasons for our actions must inevitably involve a kind of detachment from oneself . . .. [T]o the extent that it involves detachment from oneself it must . . . prevent one being oneself . . .. How then could it be supposed that concentration on the reasons for our actions and our intentions in acting is the paradigm of self-knowledge, and equally the key to the kind of freedom that this may produce? (1983, pp. 259–260) We may wonder whether a Socratic person, both fully rational and motivated, exists. He is a hypothetical extreme, a “limiting case” of complete moral rationality. Rationality along the lines of Socrates and Kekes can contribute to self-knowledge as motivational, but in itself is not enough. Motivation also depends on the third element of self-knowledge: self-presence, or inwardness. Self-evaluation that motivates me results from a mixture of rationality and selfpresence. But why, and how, inwardness? We can start to bridge the gap between information and evaluation on the one hand, and action on the other, by multiplying synonyms: I have already used self-presence and inwardness. Hamlyn speaks of being oneself and being involved in oneself. We can also cite being rooted in oneself, or being anchored in oneself. Each of these formulas may contribute a little to understanding how we move from self-evaluation to doing something about it. Inwardness in the sense I mean will help to extend these thoughts. In separateness, and sensing my separateness, I do not lose myself in the world. Separateness is an inoculation that responds to Hamlyn’s warning against being limited by the blindness to self that comes from an overriding concern with the world. I reserve something of myself, after the commitments and loyalties are given. Separateness may also contribute to the gap between information and evaluation on the one hand and action in the world on the other. In order to act, I must be attentive to the world, whereas separateness is an absence of or withdrawal from attention to the world. The point here is that separateness is a significant consideration in the relation of information and evaluation to action. The forms of privacy are also important. In sensing my agency, I sense myself as the source of my actions. I go beyond the factual statement, that these are my actions, to feel and sense myself to be their source. This is a condition for feeling responsible for them. I not only know, I feel that acting, and acting in particular ways, is up to me. In sensing my subjectivity, I realize

86

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

that the person “in here” who sees and hears the world, is me, and this is my life. In sensing my limits, I realize that my life has temporal and other limits, and that I have only that life to make good. Making it as good as possible then becomes serious and urgent. The sense of continuity links these forms together through time, to a single person. The sense of unity ties them together in my immediate attention. These are not rational calculations but forms of my presence to myself. They impel me toward action in response to information about and evaluation of myself. They bring the information and evaluation home in a way that makes the evaluation a matter of profound concern and motivation. Some extension of akrásia or sloth remains possible, but they are less likely to hold sway. Inwardness is an important link between self-knowledge as information and evaluation, and action. The world usually contains the goods sought and the harms avoided in action, so outwardness is important. But my character may be marked by inwardness. As separateness, this may limit or hinder action; I may not be sufficiently engaged in the world, or be too alienated from it, to act. On the other hand, inwardness may impel me to act, for reasons set out just above. Both dynamics may be at work in a person, even at the same time. Recognition of the potential role of inwardness and of its juxtaposition with outwardness must be part of any thorough discussion of action and motivation. 3. Complexity I noted early in this chapter that the information of concern in self-knowledge should be important. What is important will vary with the individual and situation. We need to recognize the complexity of the objects of selfknowledge. We cannot establish in advance what will be important. We must respect the variety of persons, the variety within one person, the variety of situations, and all their interactions. The need to recognize complexity is implicit in Murdoch’s critique of freedom: [I]f we consider what the work of attention is like, how continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds up structures of values round about us, we shall not be surprised that at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over. This does not imply that we are not free, certainly not. But it implies that the exercise of our freedom is a small piecemeal business which goes on all the time and not a grandiose leaping about unimpeded at important moments. The moral life, on this view, is something that goes on continually, not something that is switched off in between the occurrence of explicit moral choices. What happens in between such choices is indeed what is crucial. (Murdoch, p. 37)

Self-Knowledge

87

We can illustrate the need to recognize complexity by considering the difficulty of assessing lives in families. Usually in a family, a person has several roles and relationships simultaneously: spouse, parent, child, grandparent, grandchild, uncle, aunt, niece, nephew, cousin, step-relation, in-law. The relationships are nuanced. Family members enact their roles in immediacies, sometimes with, sometimes without a chance to prepare for them. The roles overlap, as do themes, influences, effects. A person in a family changes, the family changes. Emotions and motivations mix and swirl, flow together and apart. Multiple causes and multiple effects are frequent. While the complexities are boundless, they are often undramatic and not easily externally perceptible nor explicitly expressed. Murdoch’s example of “M” and “D” illustrates the difficulty. Her description of their relationship is subtler than many “cases” employed by many philosophers, yet it leaves out much. For just one instance, it treats the relationship as independent of M’s husband and her son (D’s father-in-law and her husband). M is unlikely to have the luxury of nursing her feelings toward D entirely apart from others and from all the other demands of her life. Perhaps the best-known statement about family in a novel is the opening sentence of Anna Karenina. It illustrates the vulnerability of even a major classic to damaging simplification: “All happy families are like one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” (Tolstoy, 1961). This has an attention-catching surface cleverness, which explains its fame. It both simplifies and falsifies for the sake of the quip. Families are not separable into two distinct tribes, the happy ones and the unhappy ones. Most mix happiness and unhappiness to varying degrees and at different times; often some members are comparatively happy, others comparatively unhappy. Unhappy families are not all interesting or unique, nor are happy families all boring or conformist. The statement, on the face of it, is false. Happy families are not all happy in the same way; unhappy families may well be unhappy in the same or quite similar ways. Lives in families are too complex, too hard to observe and describe, for the truth about them to lie in such generalizations. The problem posed by the complexity and variety of lives in families is as morally important as family is important in the goodness of lives. We cannot overstate that importance, notwithstanding the short shrift it often receives among philosophers. If the loving attention to reality and individuals recommended by Murdoch is an important characteristic of many good lives, family is one of the main places where we develop, use, and act on such attention. In family a person can perceive deeply as subject, make a difference as agent, establish continuity, achieve intimacy, employ moral capabilities, love, and be loved. Family is the primary place where people develop to the verge of maturity. Family provides all these goods in great variety and complexity.

88

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

The challenge posed by family is only one instance of the complexity which self-knowledge has to assimilate. Other aspects of life pose other challenges: other relationships, work, intellectual life, artistic life, community, politics, religion, the natural world, and interactions among these aspects. The nature of a person also poses a challenge. A person is complex and never finished. The past is an unfathomable reservoir of memory. Starting with one memory, we can always dredge others. Countless thoughts, feelings, perceptions, motivations converge on the present and issue from the past in the future. One detail always leads to others. The future is undefined. Inwardness has a role in this complexity. The examples I have returned to a number of times illustrate the importance of inwardness: the girl with her parents, the old woman (the girl now aged) thinking about her children and grandchildren, and the husband and wife considering a religious commitment. We must assess inwardness in self-knowledge. Inwardness involves an entire separate direction for a person’s attention. It makes a person’s relation to the world interesting and problematic. It makes that relation an issue. It can contribute to, or detract from, outwardness, just as outwardness can contribute to, or detract from, inwardness. Inwardness often colors outward experience; outwardness often colors inward experience. No aspect of life or experience is unaffected by, or is without the potential to be affected by, inwardness. Self-knowledge will always be incomplete and imperfect. In this way, self-knowledge is like knowledge of many other things. Self-knowledge also differs from other kinds of knowledge in important ways. Self-knowledge is based, in part, on the special access provided by introspection. It also involves a special vulnerability to self-deception and skewed perspective. Verification is hard, perhaps impossible, to achieve. The differences between self-knowledge and knowledge of other things is another element in the complexity of lives. I summarize our consideration of self-knowledge and inwardness’s place in it as follows: Self-knowledge has three elements, information, evaluation, and self-presence. Inwardness has a role in each element. In balance with outwardness, it provides perspective on our lives and ourselves. It allows comparison and location needed for information about ourselves. It provides categories and criteria for evaluating our lives and ourselves. Inwardness is identifiable with the third element of self-knowledge, self-presence. Hampshire and Murdoch differ over the possibility and desirability of achieving freedom through self-knowledge. Neither recognizes a role for inwardness. Because of his explicit dismissal of thoughts not directly linked to actions, Hampshire seems least hospitable to considering inwardness. Murdoch’s emphasis on patient, loving regard is not an explicit rejection of inwardness, but leaves it aside. Inwardness has a significant role in achieving some kinds of freedom, and in achieving patient, loving regard. Separateness contributes to freedom

Self-Knowledge

89

by providing some independence from social context. It also helps us to step back from engagement, to survey alternatives. Inwardness as self-presence anchors me to myself. It resists the tendency toward detachment from myself against which Hamlyn warns. That detachment can arise from too much emphasis on information about and evaluation of myself. In resisting detachment, inwardness can be motivating. In juxtaposition with outwardness, it links information and evaluation to action. A description of self-knowledge should recognize the complexity of persons and situations. An instance of complexity is family, which is important to the goodness of many lives. Inwardness is often important in family life. Family is only one instance of the complexity that self-knowledge needs to encompass. Inwardness, which has a role in each of the three elements of selfknowledge, complicates self-knowledge, because it provides another dimension to self, to experience, and to life. Inwardness is a dimension that interacts in morally important ways with attention to the world.

This page intentionally left blank

Six OTHERS In this chapter, I explore the relation of inwardness to knowledge of others, with reference to some thoughts of René Descartes, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Edmund Husserl. I also describe inwardness’s part in sympathy and intimacy. 1. Precedence In the Meditations, Descartes seeks to achieve certainty by discarding whatever could be doubted. He applies himself “sincerely and without reservation to the general demolition of [his] opinions” (1988a, p. 76). The senses can deceive, so we cannot trust them, nor can we rely on “physics, astronomy, medicine, and all other disciplines which depend on the study of” corporeal or extended things (ibid., p. 78). In the most radical application of his doubting, Descartes declares, “I will suppose . . . that not God, who is supremely good and the source of truth, but rather some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me” (ibid., p. 79). I must, therefore, doubt everything. But, he reflects, if I am being deceived, then I undoubtedly exist. Let this demon: deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something . . .. I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me, or conceived in my mind. (Ibid., p. 80) This certainty of his existence provides the foundation on which Descartes constructs a system of knowledge that he thinks is infallible. Descartes identifies self with mind. I know my thoughts more immediately, earlier, more completely, and with more certainty, than I know my body or the world. In Principles of Philosophy, he writes: [I]f we, who are supposing that everything which is distinct from us is false, examine what we are, we see quite clearly that neither extension nor shape nor local motion, nor anything of this kind which is attributable to a body, belongs to our nature, but that thought alone belongs to it. So our knowledge of our thought is prior to, and more certain than, our knowledge of any corporeal thing; for we have already perceived it, although we are still in doubt about other things. (1988b, p. 162)

92

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

Every sense-perception may or may not be true about the world, but that I am having a perception, and that I, as mind, exist, is certain. If I think I am walking, that I am walking is not certain, but it is certain that I think so. [K]nowledge of our mind is not simply prior to and more certain than the knowledge of our body, but also more evident . . .. [I]t may perhaps be the case that I judge that I am touching the earth even though the earth does not exist at all; but it cannot be that, when I make this judgment, my mind which is making this judgment does not exist. And the same applies in other cases. (Ibid., p. 163) In this way, Descartes gives precedence to self-knowledge over knowledge of the world (and therefore over knowledge of others). Self-knowledge, knowledge that I exist, is the foundation for knowledge of the world. He gives precedence to self-knowledge too, in immediate and infallible access to thoughts, and in the need to go to thoughts for access, through sensory awareness, to the world. As the foundation for knowledge of the world, self-knowledge that I am, for Descartes, guarantees (through a set of steps, including a proof of God’s existence, omitted here) the reliability of perceptions of the world. In itself, it does not contribute much of substance to knowledge of others. It encourages us to rely, in the right circumstances, on our perceptions of others, and to conclude that they, since they are similar to ourselves, are also thinking beings. Descartes here makes only a limited contribution to morality, where the interest is less on the guarantee than on the substance: what does selfknowledge contribute to knowledge of others? What do I, or can I, know about another, not as a representative of the species, but in his or her particularity? I will return to this question. First, we need to consider a challenge to the Cartesian foundation of all knowledge in self-knowledge. Wittgenstein reverses the Cartesian precedence. He argues that a private language, my language, in which I only speak to myself about my sensations, is logically impossible. To think about anything, we must have a language, a set of rules, with which we connect the contents of our minds with their objects. We learn the rules for a language through training, the source of which is external and public. The language itself, with its rules, must be public, not private. For its consistent application, it must have a check or test. The only conceivable test is “public”: agreement between two or more subjects. Descartes supposes that his subject grapples with the malicious deceiver by himself. This is impossible. He must use an inherited public language to do his grappling. He is not, and cannot be, completely isolated. Wittgenstein offers the case of a blind man learning that he is blind. The blind man:

Others

93

too describes the facts [of his blindness] . . . having learned the same language as we have . . .. The outward circumstances are what both he and we know. Whenever he behaves in a certain way, we say that he sees nothing; but he notices that a certain private experience of his coincides with all these cases and so concludes that we mean this experience of his by saying that he sees nothing. (1968, p. 285) This suggests that the terms by which we have self-knowledge must come from a public language and from reference to others. Logically, the public realm must be prior to self-knowledge. For self-knowledge, we observe what others are saying and doing (in the public realm), use public words for it, and internalize it, applying it to ourselves. We start with attention to the world, observing others, using the public language, and then reflexively use the information gained. An adherent of Wittgenstein’s view might note of Descartes that he formulates his philosophy, including the certainty that he exists, in French and Latin. He inherits both languages from the public realm. If so, that public realm, logically and chronologically, comes first. A partial counter to this point might be that the blind person is not having the same experience—seeing things—that sighted people have, even though the same words apply to the same situations. I repeat Husserl’s “deaf man” example, cited earlier as an instance of limits, for our current purpose: A man born deaf knows that there are sounds, that sounds produce harmonies and that a splendid art depends on them. But he cannot understand how sounds do this, how musical compositions are possible. Such things he cannot imagine . . .. His knowledge about what exists helps him in no way, and it would be absurd if he were to try to deduce the how of music from his knowledge, thinking that thereby he could achieve clarity about the possibility of music through conclusions drawn from things of which he is cognizant. (1964/1907, pp. 30–31) The deaf man example shows that the inherited, logically necessary public language is inadequate for me to know or understand some kinds of experiences if I do not have the experiences for myself. The deaf man example is the reverse of Wittgenstein’s blind man, who needs the public label to learn that he is blind, to be able to refer to it. Wittgenstein is speaking of the application of labels. Husserl is speaking of what something is, especially of the nature of experience. Wittgenstein’s point is that the language provides the labels, allows me to isolate and name the experience for others and myself. Since the label is public, there may be intersubjective communication about it. Husserl is saying that I must have had the experience myself in order to know the nature of what the label refers to.

94

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

We have private experience; we need a public language to grasp it. The deaf man can know from the testimony of others that some things exist that others call sound and music. The public language gives him those labels, and he has an idea of when they apply, so we can say that he grasps it in that way. He cannot himself know sound or music, what they are. To what kinds of experience does this need for the experience itself apply? Evidently, it applies to immediate sensory experience. What is the case of music for the deaf man applies as well to colors to the blind. Others can use the word “red,” but I will not understand the experience to which “red” applies unless I have seen colors in general, and that color in particular. (This requirement may not be absolute. Presumably, I would understand a near shade, for instance, if presented with a particular shade of red, and told the color in question is just a little darker. This understanding would not extend to orange or purple.) A person totally blind from birth will not know the realm of color at all. A public service announcement on behalf of an organization for the blind recently made this point. Some people think, it went, that blind people see darkness, that they see what sighted people see when their eyes are covered. Totally blind people do not see darkness, they do not see anything at all, any more than the back of your hand sees darkness. That is how far red is from a totally blind person’s experience. Not even darkness is available for a clue. If we do not have a sensory experience for ourselves, language and thought cannot provide it for us. Does the need for immediate experience extend beyond the sensory? In particular, is inwardness like sensory experience? Is a sense of separateness or subjectivity or continuity like a perception of sound or color? If so, a person without inwardness could not know of (“cannot imagine”) inwardness in another. I could neither know the nature of the experience nor to what “inwardness” applies. If another’s inwardness is an important aspect of that individual’s character, then I need inwardness for my knowledge of the individual to be adequate. It may also be important to know when inwardness is absent in another. I cannot know of its absence in another without its presence in me; nor know when inwardness is more or less intense, nor know its particular qualities. But is inwardness like sensory experience? Ultimately, separateness and privacy will be mixtures of both immediate experience and what we learn from others. What we observe of others, what we read and hear others say, and what we formulate for ourselves from what we derive from the public realm, play a part. At the core of the experience, I am inward, and know it in immediacy. The public realm does not inject the experience into me. It helps me recognize and label the experience I have. By immediate experience, I know what inwardness is. Observations and formulations accrete around this core and contribute to the development of inwardness. The public realm provides the la-

Others

95

bels and comparisons. Then, reading Søren Kierkegaard, say, may help me to understand my subjectivity, but this is by virtue of a resonance of what he says with my immediate experience. Kierkegaard articulates and extends what I have already experienced inarticulately and primitively. I must have the primitive experience to use what he says. The child’s frightened realization that she is alone in her separateness from her parents is reached in stages. Initially, as a small child, she senses that she is “in here,” looking out. She may even sense it physically, and remember the sensation later, as that of looking out on the world from an interior space. She feels alone “in here.” The sensation is not quite troubling or frightening; no idea that something is wrong accompanies the sensation. She has not articulated the sensation for herself, and she has little with which to compare it as different from how things should have been. This core experience she has for herself. In a different child, the exigencies of survival, or social demands, might eventually overwhelm this nascent separateness, so that it develops no further, but not for her. Using the public language, she becomes conscious of and elaborates on her separateness. She becomes more aware of other people as separate and as having their own desires. Juxtaposing her sense of her separateness with such awareness of the world (assuming that the world’s demands are not so exacting that she loses track of her primitive experience of separateness), she becomes aware that each of them out there is “in there,” each having his or her “in here.” She senses this inarticulately at first, but it involves a growing, conscious formulation on her part. Then, set off by the momentary impression caused by the odd light and shadows in her family’s summer cottage, her parents’ faces become masks for her. She has no idea what is going on “in there,” behind the masks. They, her parents, may be malicious deceivers . . . or robots. In a panic, she realizes the fullness of her, and their, separateness. She forms the idea, a deduction, and no longer solely an immediate impression, that her hitherto normal reaction to something that frightened her, which would be to run to her parents, would now be a horrendous mistake. The waves of childhood flow back and forth, and in time the child’s fear is lapped by other sensations and perceptions, so while the initial feeling lasts only a moment, it remains part of her sense of the world. The explicit recognition of her separateness is the fruition of the experience. Later in life, she may read Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov’s Oblomov (1859), Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground (1960/1864), Albert Camus’s The Stranger (1942), and round out both her experience of separateness and her more general understanding of it as a topic. I must sense inwardness for myself, in self-presence. If I merely posit inwardness about myself in detachment, as a discussion topic, something is missing from self-knowledge. This is at the heart of the issue taken with JeanPaul Sartre and Stuart Hampshire. If ego were simply transcendent, and so

96

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

took its place among objects in the world, no different from them, or were experienced as such, we would have information about the ego as about other objects. We could “achieve clarity about . . . [it] . . . through conclusions drawn from things of which [we are] cognizant” (Husserl, 1964/1907, p. 31). But I would have no sense of myself as subject, no bodily sensations as mine, no sense of myself as agent, or as having continuity or limits. To be sure “I” could posit such things about “myself,” but they would lack just what has been described as self-presence and inwardness. They would not bring “me” to act. Nothing could bring “me” to say, “This is me, my life, I am at stake here.” Experience has two poles. At the inward pole, I sense my separateness, continuity, bodily sensations, subjectivity, agency, limits, unity, not merely as objects in the world, but as the pole apart from objects in the world. I do not just experience a streetcar-having-to-be-overtaken, as Sartre claims in The Transcendence of the Ego. I feel my heart beating in chasing the streetcar. I sense my agency in the need to catch the streetcar, my continuity in my reasons for catching it, and my subjectivity in seeing the streetcar and, perhaps, in hearing people on the sidewalk laughing at the chase. I carry all of these as I run. They are experienced “in here,” not “out there,” and I experience these immediately, integral with the event. I do not posit them after the fact. If I have had relevant experiences, I can know what another is describing. I can know not only to what he is referring, as if he were pointing at it, but also know what the experience is like, how the experience is for him. This happens only if a basis exists, that core, in my similar, immediate, inward experience, to which I can apply the other’s description. This is the dynamic of inwardness: immediate, sensed experience, developed further in outward observation, and in formulation. This mixture is a matter of degree. Inwardness in the form of bodily sensation is close to sensory experience, usually involving less development in outward observation than other forms involve. A person cannot know what a headache is, what a headache is like, without having a headache, or what sexual arousal is without sexuality. The knowledge that “someone has a headache,” without knowing what this aggregate of letters or sounds means by having experience of it, is limited. We could predict, perhaps with some accuracy, that when a woman says she has a headache, she will not go to a party. We will not know what a headache feels like. We might have some notion of what she feels if we have had other pains and aches and understand that she has a pain that is in her head. Without any experience of pain, we could know little of what the other is feeling. We would only have the external behavior to try to predict further behavior by. Possibly, if we knew some other kind of suffering, not physical pain, we could be coached, with greatly diminished knowledge, to extrapolate from suffering to physical pain to headache. The farther we get from having

Others

97

the particular experience ourselves, the less we can realize what such experiences are like, “through conclusions drawn from [other] things of which [we are] cognizant” (ibid.). Other forms of inwardness, such as the sense of agency, make more use of observation, formulation, and teaching. Each form and each particular experience of inwardness involves a mixture. Even sensory experience is like this. To know color we must be able to see, to know sound we must be able to hear, but with sight, with hearing, our eyes and our ears can be educated. The implication of the deaf man example in context of the private language argument is that a public language is necessary, but is necessarily insufficient, both for sensory experience and for inwardness. A public language, then, is also necessary but is necessarily insufficient for self-knowledge, and also for having knowledge of another’s inwardness. Inwardness is like sensory experience in that I must have its core for myself. Communicating about sensory experience is comparatively easy, because two people can have a common object for their senses. A teacher can say “gila monster,” or “magenta this” and “magenta that,” to a child while touching or pointing to the object(s). The teacher can say “tart” while giving the child a slice of lime. Such is not the case for inwardness. I have separateness and privacy for myself; you for yourself. Two or more people cannot stand side by side and perceive the same object, someone’s inwardness, in its immediacy. No one has direct access to it in another. The inwardness of one person may parallel or be similar or analogous to the inwardness of another person, but they are not the same, individual inwardness, any more than twins are the same, individual person. The parent cannot point to his child’s subjectivity and say, “your subjectivity.” The child will have to find it for him or herself, although he or she may have help from several sources. A parent, an author, a speaker can explain about subjectivity, but the explanation will be of little avail if his listener has no core of immediate experience of subjectivity. In the course of a conversation, one person cannot present to another person a third party’s subjectivity as an object, as he can present a dog or a rose. This is so although the third party’s subjectivity is quite as particular and concrete as the dog or the rose. If inwardness or its absence is an important element in another’s character, my knowledge of that will be inadequate unless I am to some meaningful degree inward. I need both the public language and the private experience to have knowledge of another’s inwardness or of its absence in another. The claim that I need inwardness in order to know another’s inwardness is consistent with Wittgenstein’s private language argument. We need make no assumption about the genesis of self-knowledge in order to describe selfknowledge as the basis for some aspects of my knowledge of others. The claim could apply to a “secondary” stage, after I achieve (logically or chronologically) some primary level of knowledge of self and others, perhaps in

98

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

accord with Wittgenstein’s argument. That inwardness might be logically or chronologically secondary does not diminish its importance for morality. At any later point, inwardness contributes to knowledge of another. Without inwardness, important information will be missing. Even if the contribution of my inwardness to my knowledge of others is an extension of what I inherited via the public language and what I learned about myself in observing others, the moral significance of inwardness would not be diminished. Morally, the distinction between the public and private origins of knowledge is not especially important, however important the distinction may be epistemologically. The preceding discussion shows that knowledge of important aspects of another requires inwardness. First, I need knowledge of others and a public language to achieve self-knowledge. But knowledge of others, and a public language, is also necessarily insufficient to achieve self-knowledge. Immediate experience, of the senses and of inwardness, is also necessary. A reciprocal relation between public language and knowledge and immediate experience is required for sufficient knowledge of self and of others. Second, even if we granted the precedence and primacy of a public language and of knowledge of others over self-knowledge, all that would occur in the genesis of knowledge. The need for inwardness in order to know the inwardness of another (or its absence) arises at a different stage, after we assimilate the epistemological origins. We can understand the application of selfknowledge to knowledge of others as a later, but no less morally critical, extension. In either case, without inwardness, I cannot know inwardness in another. Since I cannot directly observe another’s inwardness, I can only observe my inwardness and, with indirect, observable clues, infer another’s inwardness. Thomas Nagel, in a passage cited in part in chapter two, discusses the question of agency and responsibility for outcomes beyond a person’s control (p. 37). He illustrates the dynamic just described. I base knowledge of another as agent (instead of as thing) on my knowledge of myself as agent: There is a close connexion between our feelings about ourselves and our feelings about others. Guilt and indignation, shame and contempt, pride and admiration are internal and external sides of the same moral attitudes. We are unable to view ourselves simply as portions of the world, and from inside we have a rough idea of the boundary between what is us and what is not, what we do and what happens to us , what is our personality and what is an accidental handicap. We apply the same essentially internal conception of the self to others . . .. We cannot simply take an external evaluative view of ourselves––of what we most essentially are and what we do. And this remains true even when we have seen that we are not responsible for our own existence, or our nature, or the choices we have to make, or the circumstances that give our acts the consequences

Others

99

they have. Those acts remain ours and we remain ourselves, despite the persuasiveness of the reasons that seem to argue us out of existence. It is this internal view that we extend to others in moral judgment–– when we judge them rather than their desirability or utility. We extend to others the refusal to limit ourselves to external evaluation, and we accord to them selves like our own. (Ibid.) We should not too quickly draw connections and parallels between my feelings about myself and how I feel about others. The biblical injunction to love your fellow as yourself illustrates the problem (Leviticus 19:18). I can love another, but what does loving myself mean? I am concerned about my wellbeing, and can understand an injunction to have similar concern for others. But the idea of loving myself is incomprehensible—a category mistake. It cannot be a reference point for loving others. This reservation aside, Nagel describes for agency just what I have offered more broadly for inwardness. Nagel is concerned with responsibility and moral judgment, while I extend the dynamic he describes to all those aspects of others associated with inwardness. I sense my inwardness and its forms. I accord others something similar although I do not assume that they sense their inwardness and its forms in just the same ways, in the same intensities and proportions, I do mine. Having shown that inwardness is a condition for some aspects of our knowledge of others, I need to describe how we achieve such knowledge in the juxtaposition of inwardness and outwardness. Knowing that, in general, others are inward is not enough. We sometimes need to know the specific nature of another’s inwardness: its intensity, the intensities of its different forms, the interactions among the forms, the interactions between the forms and outward attention. We need to know the experiences that give them texture. We need to know how these intensities, forms, and interactions contribute to another’s character, and how they influence the other’s life. Knowledge of another involves recognition of the other’s particular character. This was the reason for pointing out that while Descartes’s selfknowledge might provide grounds for confidence in my knowledge of others, it contributes only in a limited way anything of moral substance to such knowledge. Descartes’s claim says only that in general others are thinking beings. It does not address what particular individuals are thinking, the relation between what they think and how they behave, and the differences and similarities among those individuals. How do I know the inwardness of a particular other? One response might be some sort of manual to the observable clues to others’ states of mind, especially clues to the inward states. Several reasons argue against this. One is that it would be beyond my competence, probably beyond anyone’s competence. Another is that it would be beside the point here. My purpose is

100

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

not to offer a self-help guide to gaining such knowledge, but to show how, in general terms, it can come about. I am explaining, not producing a cookbook. Another reason is that attempting to make such matters explicit could be harmful. An essential element of spontaneity would be lost. Imagine repeatedly thumbing through such a manual of clues and signs at a family gathering or a tryst! Finally, it would not work. Recognizing the inwardness of another has subliminal, intuitive, individual, or culture-specific elements, that attempting to generalize would obscure. What is explicit is likely to be simplistic while what is subliminal is likely to be complex and subtle. No guidebook could be adequate to the interpretation of individual inwardness, the recognition of which requires familiarity with the individual and the specific context. The same observable expression or gesture might mean different things about different people or about the same person in different contexts. 2. Illustration Recall the husband thinking about his preoccupied wife after she has gone out for a walk, and the clues, learned over decades, which he uses. He is not only an instance of reciprocity of inwardness and outwardness within a person. He also illustrates how knowledge of another develops. We can trace some steps by which he might have attained his knowledge of his wife. Taken flexibly, to fit others’ different characters and situations, the steps are applicable more generally. The steps need not occur in the indicated order. Nor do we have to take them consciously. The husband is inward, inwardness having developed as suggested in foregoing chapters. His inwardness is significant but not unusually intense. His inwardness and his attention to the world are in reasonable balance. He observes others. He has observed his wife. He is reflexive. His reflexiveness owes much to observing others, in accord with the private language argument, but it does not owe everything. With that reflexiveness, he is able to place himself in the world, and, to some extent, to observe himself as others might. In juxtaposing inwardness and reflexiveness, he observes himself as others observe him, with the added knowledge that his inwardness is beyond others’ immediate observation. The husband can juxtapose his observation of others and his observation of himself as others observe him, and the knowledge that his inwardness is beyond others’ immediate observation. On finding similarities between what he learns from observation of others and from reflexive observation of himself, he has long drawn the conclusion that inwardness exists in others. If, externally, he is observable with specifiable features (he looks and sounds like a human being), and he knows he is inward, and another has similar features, he surmises that another is inward too. Recognizing that others sense their

Others

101

separateness, continuity, and so forth, is significant. For knowledge of others, he must be alert to the possibilities of their inwardness. The husband has long been alert to inwardness in his wife. His awareness began, tentatively, with their first acquaintance. His awareness of the possibility of inwardness in others had formed gradually through his life, and he made use of it with people in whom he was interested. This included his wife above all. The husband notes that his inwardness is not observable directly by others, so he is not surprised that he cannot observe it directly in others. He can only surmise it, as a conscious conclusion or as a subliminal assumption. Like the Cartesian knowledge that others are thinking beings, the general information that others are inward is not enough. We need knowledge of the specific nature of some individuals’ inwardness. Although the husband posits inwardness in others because of external similarities, he also observes external variations. They say and write different things, they describe themselves differently. Besides nuances associated with language, such as intonations of voice, other signs are evident, by which he may infer individual variations: the choices others make, their behavior, expressions, gestures, posture, location, responsiveness to others and surroundings, habits of reserve or solitude. Individuals differ from each other in such observable characteristics, and one individual may vary from one time to another. He is as familiar with these characteristics in his wife as he is with anything in his life. The husband is reflexively aware of such observable variations in himself, and these variations are sometimes correlated with variations in his inwardness: its intensity, the relative intensities and interactions among its forms. He also has been aware of others observing and reacting to such signals in him. The husband learns to apply the variable clues and expressions of others, including what others say about themselves, to their inwardness, by comparing them to his observable clues and expressions as they are correlated with his inwardness. Over the years, he has become adept at recognizing signs of particular forms of inwardness in his wife. Comparing these signs to his inwardness (although they differ from his) enables him to recognize in her her sense of herself as agent and her sense of her limits. This is not merely a surmise in the current situation, but what he has learned over years of intimacy. Having the basis in himself for inference about others’ inwardness, the husband need not be limited to himself as the point of reference. He can compare others for clues and expressions, as long as his inwardness remains as the underlying point of departure, the only direct access he has to inwardness. In accord with the deaf man example, once we hear music, we can compare pieces of music. He has read novelists’ and others’ descriptions of external clues and expressions, and of inwardness, and compares them to himself and to his observations of others. He can compare another person’s external clues with

102

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

what the person says about herself. He compares these comparisons to comparisons of his inwardness as directly sensed, with, reflexively, his external clues, with what he thinks, and what he hears himself saying about his inwardness. The husband has made mistakes about the inwardness of others, and will make more. He may think another is intensely inward when he is not. He may attribute someone’s apparently meditative withdrawal to his sense of his agency and continuity, when what he is observing is merely a pose to impress others. He may think that the main characteristics of another’s inwardness is the sense of subjectivity and limits, when bodily sensations are the focus. In some situations, especially with superficial acquaintance, or when assessing public figures, the mistakes may remain in place. He may err, even in close relationships. But with frequent and extended contact and communication, opportunities arise for correction. He has better knowledge of some people than of others, although his ability to recognize and assess inwardness, developed in intimate relationships, may be applicable to more superficial ones. He may gain knowledge of others in his family, for instance, and apply the knowledge more widely. Even if fewer opportunities arise later to correct mistakes, he may make fewer of them, be less likely to jump to conclusions about others. Early in their marriage, the husband had been hurt by his wife’s moments of withdrawal, thinking they meant a lack of interest in or irritation with him. Over time, he learned through arguments, explanations, and further explanations that usually her withdrawal was not related to him. Close relationships allow for correction. On the other hand, some aspects of family and other intimate relationships may make for more, not fewer, misunderstandings about inwardness. The husband is also familiar with the context, his wife’s life. He knows that she does not find her professional life challenging; it is unlikely to be the cause of her preoccupation. He also knows the seriousness of her religious pursuit, and that it could well be what she is thinking about so hard. All these contribute to his knowledge of his wife: his inwardness and self-knowledge, his life over decades with her, and his familiarity with her current situation. We can take this analysis of inwardness as important for knowledge of others a step further. So far, I have only addressed having information about others, that they are inward, and my information about the inwardness of individuals. The analysis parallels having information about oneself. But information is only one element of self-knowledge. In chapter five we explored and endorsed the implications of David Hamlyn’s assertion that self-knowledge is more than having information about oneself. Being oneself—self-presence—is also self-knowledge, and this is describable in terms of the forms of inwardness: the intensity with which I sense my separateness, continuity, subjectivity, agency, limits, bodily sensations, unity. Can we draw any parallel to self-knowledge as being oneself— self-presence—for knowledge of others?

Others

103

I have a unique relation to my bodily sensations, separateness, continuity, subjectivity, agency, limits. Others may have these states of mind, these tendencies of thought and feeling for themselves, but to the extent that I know of their states and tendencies, I only have information about them. My knowledge of them is just that, information. Information about another’s inwardness is not the same as or analogous to my inwardness, which is not information, although I may have information about it. Knowledge that another person is inward is still information about that person, and so is not analogous to being oneself and self-presence. An analogy to my presence to myself does exist. This analogy is with another’s presence to me, beyond my having information about him or her. Another may be present to me in two ways. One is how another impinges on me and my life: The threat the person poses to me or the safety the person provides, the power the other has over my circumstances, the other’s cruelty, indifference, kindness. This sort of presence, impingement, is not an analogy to my presence to myself. In the second way, others may be present to me in their own right. Recall that my presence to myself is identified with my inwardness. By analogy, another person’s presence to me in the person’s own right consists in my sense of the other person’s presence to him or herself. This is not information about the person’s inwardness, but my sense of the intensity with which the person senses his or her bodily sensations, separateness, continuity, subjectivity, agency, limits, unity. The other’s presence to me in this second way, in the other’s own right, is the intensity with which I sense the intensity of the other’s inwardness. In the example of the husband thinking about his wife, she is present to him in both ways. As his wife, she impinges on him, as he on her; each can make the other happy or unhappy. She is present to him in her own right as well. He strongly senses her presence to herself, the intensity of her inwardness, or, in Hamlyn’s terms, the degree to which she is herself. He senses her sense of her agency, subjectivity, continuity, limits. The husband wonders whether his wife has had trouble at work, but he doubts that this is what is preoccupying her. He feels, or believes he feels, the intensity with which she is sensing her agency, sensing herself as the source of her decisions and actions, and so the responsibility she takes for the outcomes of her decisions. He also feels the intensity with which she senses her limits, that she cannot pursue several conflicting ends at once, and that she cannot know all the consequences of the alternatives she must consider. He must not vitiate her sense of responsibility by pressing on her his desires and his opinions, although he does want to be available to her, for her use in extending her perspective. Several ways, then, converge for him in the intensity of her presence to him, his sense of her presence to herself.

104

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

A further extension can be made of knowledge of others. Knowledge of others can include awareness of their self-knowledge, of others having information about themselves, of them evaluating themselves and of being themselves. Knowledge of others may also include awareness that they have knowledge of others, including of oneself, along the lines of what has been adumbrated in this chapter. Such awareness of another’s self-knowledge and of the other’s knowledge of others depends on an awareness of having those attributes oneself. We could extend this dynamic indefinitely, in the style of Henry James: that another has knowledge of my knowledge of his or her knowledge, ad infinitum, but we would gain little by further pursuit here. The husband’s knowledge of his wife also illustrates the contribution to the goodness of lives provided by knowledge of another in an intimate relationship. He has a great deal of information about her, but, besides that, she is present to him in the intensity of her inwardness. His knowledge of his wife is central in his life, and at its core is her presence to him, his sense of the intensity of her inwardness. While she is on her walk, her sense of agency and limits is present to him. That presence is accompanied (inwardness being a web of connected forms) by the wider range of her inwardness: her subjectivity, her continuity, and so forth, with which he has become familiar over the years. The knowledge is immediately satisfying to him and involves benefits for her. The satisfaction for him includes, since he loves her, his knowledge of her itself, both as her presence to him and as the information he has about her. His resulting ability to benefit his wife affords him further satisfaction. The immediate benefits the husband’s knowledge of his wife confers on her include his self-restraint and his readiness to provide perspective when he is asked. Her awareness of his readiness to benefit her is a further benefit to her. Over the long term are the satisfactions and benefits of a strong and intimate marriage into which they weave knowledge of each other and to which knowledge of another contributes. Knowledge of another usually suffuses intimacy, in another’s presence to me. It involves sensing the other’s subjectivity. I identify with the other to feel what the other is feeling as subject. I sense the other’s presence to him or herself, subjectivity, and the other’s experience of other forms of inwardness. I sense the web of these forms as attending immediate experiences, such as chasing a streetcar. I not only share some feelings, but to some extent sense what being the other is like. In an intimate relationship this dimension is lasting. It characterizes an ongoing state of a relationship. In the husband and wife, familiarity developed over many years. Such a relationship is likely to occur once or a few times in a life, though strands and traces of intimacy may occur in other relationships. Because it is lasting and because the husband senses his wife’s agency, subjectivity, and limits, the relationship of this husband and preoccupied wife is intimate. The relationship is mutual in that the wife is for him what he has

Others

105

been described as being for her—not as a mirror image, but analogously, reciprocally, in her way. As we have seen in the husband, inwardness and its juxtaposition with outwardness play an essential part. We can compare the inwardness of the husband with that of the child in the cottage. The child’s separateness from her parents and the isolation and alienation into which it plunges her is terrifying. By virtue of his inwardness, although related in some ways to the child’s, the husband is linked, in the opposite of isolation and alienation, to his wife. Some reservations are in order for this description of the benefits of inwardness and knowledge of others. The intimacy I have described is incomplete; the husband only “to some extent” knows how it is to be his wife. Intimacy is never complete. For reasons beyond the scope of the current work, this limitation may be desirable. Utter intimacy may not be the best for a marriage or other relationship. We do not always put knowledge of others to generous uses. Ungenerous uses also affect a life. Knowledge of another can help to make intentions effective, whether they are benevolent, neutral, or malicious. Knowledge of others does not necessarily dispose us to conferring benefits. The instance described is of a good marriage. In a marriage gone bad, the presence of another remains but can become detestable, and knowledge of another can be put to angry, destructive uses. In contrast, sympathy, a discussion of which follows, does dispose us to benefit and not to harm others. 3. Sympathy Self-knowledge and knowledge of others are “free floating.” They can affect the goodness of the life of the person who possesses them in different ways. They can help to identify goals and to further the goals identified. They do not determine the goals, which can be harmful or beneficial. Inwardness has a role in motivating people to act on self-evaluation. This motivation is general; it does not depend on whether the particular evaluation is favorable or unfavorable, or whether what we evaluate is good or evil. We can be moved to particular actions or kinds of actions. Benevolence or kindness, the disposition to act in ways that benefit others, results in specifiable patterns of behavior. It may have several sources, which are not entirely distinct from each other. Sympathy is one of the sources, and inwardness is important in sympathy. Not free floating, sympathy is connected to some goals but inimical to other goals. After describing sympathy, citing David Hume on its moral importance, I will describe the role of inwardness in sympathy, furthering my claim for inwardness’s moral importance, and enhancing our understanding of sympathy. We can distinguish two related meanings of “sympathy.” The literal, etymological meaning is feeling with: having the emotion, perception, or

106

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

experience that another has. I do not actually repeat an incident or event myself which the other has had, but I have feelings in resonance with other’s experience. I do not merely know what another feels, that is, know that she feels something, that, say, Jane is sad; I share the feeling, I feel sad as well. The other meaning of sympathy is feeling for. It has to do with being well disposed toward another. The two meanings are related because feeling with another tends to foster feeling for her or him: if I feel what she or he feels, I will prefer that she or he not suffer. The two meanings are also distinguishable. I can feel for another, be benevolently disposed toward him or her, without feeling with him or her. A parent feels for his or her newborn infant without much sense of what the infant may be feeling. Many who are little concerned about human beings care a great deal about—feel for—animals. Sympathy as feeling with, then, cannot be the sole source or explanation of feeling for, or benevolence. Hume takes sympathetic pain to be a smaller, paler reflection of another’s pain. But some people are upset more by pain experienced by others than by pain they experience themselves. They accept high levels of pain to themselves if it will relieve the pain of others. Hume’s notion of sympathy cannot account for such cases. Sympathy—feeling with—is a source of benevolence, but benevolence must have other sources as well. Without attempting an account of them here, these could include love, generosity, magnanimity, devotion to justice, and sentimentality. People may be vaguely well disposed to large groups of anonymous strangers if, for instance, they are perceived to be victims of injustice. We may feel for another out of admiration or loyalty, without sharing the other’s feelings. Often, when the basis of a bond is love, loyalty, admiration, collegiality, or comradeship, the bond is augmented by sympathy in the first sense. Sympathy as feeling with exists when we to some extent identify with another, not in literal identification, but in putting ourselves emotionally or imaginatively in his place. “Feeling with” is not to be taken overly literally. A husband, having experienced some physical pains, can sympathize with his wife’s birth pains without giving birth himself. Without being violinists ourselves, we can sympathize with the frustration of a violinist who is developing arthritis, because we have experienced frustration in our pursuits. In what follows, I employ “sympathy” in a mixed sense. It refers to the desire to benefit others and avoid their harm, feeling for, with emphasis on the impulse provided by feeling what another feels, feeling with. Hume finds sympathy at the heart of social virtue, providing “the force of humanity and benevolence,” the reason why “the very aspect of happiness, joy, prosperity, gives pleasure, that of pain, suffering, sorrow, communicates uneasiness . . .” (1983, p. 43). Along with the principle of utility, sympathy is the source of, or inseparable from, such social virtues as “justice, fidelity,

Others

107

honour, allegiance, and chastity . . . humanity, generosity, charity, affability, lenity, mercy, and moderation . . .” (ibid., p. 50). Toward the beginning of his panegyric on sympathy and the social virtues that it engenders, Hume advises: It is needless to push our researches so far as to ask, why we have humanity or a fellow-feeling with others. It is sufficient, that this is experienced to be a principle in human nature. We must stop somewhere in our examination of causes . . .. (Ibid., p. 43n19) I will disregard Hume’s advice, because a little farther push helps to demonstrate the moral importance of inwardness. Sympathy, insofar as it depends on feeling with another, depends significantly on inwardness. Without it, the impulse to benefit others and avoid their harm becomes weaker. Just as an understanding of inwardness helped to extend our understanding of what it means to be oneself, so an understanding of inwardness helps, despite Hume’s injunction not to worry about it, to understand the nature of sympathy. Much of sympathy originates in the juxtaposition of inwardness and outwardness. By that juxtaposition, I identify with another and participate to some extent in the other’s subjectivity. The path is similar to that of knowledge of another, but goes further. In knowledge of another, I have information, including information about inwardness. I gain it in observing another and attending to communication (outwardness), juxtaposed with my inwardness. I cannot observe another’s inwardness directly, by outwardness alone; I need the juxtaposition. I also feel the other’s presence, in sensing the other’s inwardness. I achieve this through juxtaposing inwardness and outwardness, along the lines of the steps described earlier in this chapter. With sympathy, I cross a boundary. I have more than information about a person, and more than feel the person’s presence. I feel what the other is feeling. Being inward, I can sympathize with the other’s sensing the forms of inwardness and with the emotions they involve; for the other’s sense of agency, for example, I can experience his or her gratification, triumph, pleasure, regret, guilt, or chagrin. A whole range of emotions may arise in me through sympathy based on another’s inwardness and mine. If the other person is inward and I am not, my ability to sympathize with the person will be restricted. When I juxtapose inwardness with outwardness, sympathy takes on a still larger dimension. To some extent, I enter into the other person’s subjectivity. I feel what the person feels as subject. I sense the other sensing subjectivity, the inwardness that attends thoughts and feelings. To some extent, I participate in the other’s subjectivity, and in other forms of inwardness. I participate in the inward pole in chasing a streetcar and other experiences. This occurred in the intimacy of the husband and his preoccupied wife.

108

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

If I were only outward, I could sympathize, but the sympathy would be limited in intensity and scope. It would slide over the surface. In some circumstances, I could sympathize with another’s elation or sadness, pleasure or pain, or other emotion or sensation. The emotion or sensation would be only weakly connected to the other as a separate, continuous subject and agent, who has a body and limits. If I am little inward, I can sympathize with elation, sadness, pleasure, pain, insofar as I perceive it. I can only have those emotions and sensations as attended by inwardness if I am inward myself. With inwardness, I sympathize not only with the emotions, but also with the person having those emotions. This is close to Nagel’s point about making moral judgments of others. “We extend to others the refusal to limit ourselves to external evaluation, and we accord to them selves like our own” (1979, p. 37). We feel not only the elation or sadness, but feel with the person, a self, having the emotion. This is the case not only with the self as agent, which is Nagel’s concern, but with all the forms of inwardness. Instead of being isolated, the emotion of the moment is felt as reflecting a life, a character, and an assembly of connected experiences, inward and outward. For such larger sympathy, inwardness is needed on both sides, mine and the other’s. I must be inward and so must the other person. This larger sympathy may be misplaced. I might attach sympathy to a mistaken sense of another’s inwardness. I need the corrective of knowledge of others. I am myself—in accord with Hamlyn’s injunction to be oneself—in my inwardness. Similarly, by inwardness in juxtaposition with outwardness, another may be present to me in the other’s own right. In sympathy I not only share some of his or her emotions and sensations, I also share something of the other’s sense of self as separate, continuous, a subject, an agent, limited, in experiencing those sensations, emotions, thoughts. This was the case with the husband and wife. The husband is not yet clear about his wife’s dilemma, or what preoccupies her, but he participates in her sense of agency, responsibility, and limits in confronting whatever preoccupies her. Also with him is a larger sense of her inwardness, not only her sense of her agency and limits, but her separateness, continuity, bodily sensations, subjectivity. He is prepared to sympathize not just with any embarrassment she might have suffered, but with her as a person who is embarrassed, had that been the cause of her preoccupation. It could be a mistake to try to distinguish too sharply between knowledge of another as my sensing the other’s presence in the other’s own right, and sympathy. Broadly, knowledge that another is involves sensing that the other is inward, and perhaps that the other is inward in one form or another, such as separateness or continuity. Sympathy also involves sharing the other’s feelings in that context. Knowledge of another and sympathy tend to have complementary roles. Knowledge helps me choose toward whom to be well disposed, and helps me make that disposition effective. Sympathy provides the

Others

109

impulse to be well disposed. With sympathy, my satisfactions, and the benefits I provide another converge. I gain satisfaction in providing those benefits. The sensation, emotion, or thought with which I sympathize, may be happy or sad, or have other qualities, and will have some corresponding effect on me, according to the notion of sympathy as “feeling with.” Beyond any such immediate effect, sympathy, even with sad feelings, can be a personal tie, or augment a sense of community, or is the unavoidable concomitant of the tie or community. Such a tie or sense of community is deeply satisfying to some people. A spouse in a strong marriage would choose sadness if that were required for the marriage. It would be unthinkable, for instance, to abandon a spouse who acquired a disability. Beyond a particular sadness or happiness, the life is better for maintaining the tie and meeting the commitment. Breaking the tie would result in greater sadness still. People may have values that outweigh sadness and happiness. Sympathy brings us experiences, and larger lives, which we would not have had, were we concerned only with our wellbeing. It expands the range of our activities. Out of sympathy, I might attend a dying person. As a result, I experience the attendance itself, and learn what dying is like, from an external perspective. Then, in sympathy, I share some of the dying person’s experiences. These include his bodily sensations, his immediate anticipation of death, what he feels about life at that crux. I experience something of his sense of his impending end, a limit, but, in being outside him, and not myself under its sway, his impending death does not limit me. I can then apply this perspective to myself. It helps me to recognize my limits, which might otherwise be invisible. It also helps me to recognize possibilities all the while subjectivity and limits enmesh me. This is a significant extension of selfknowledge, both as having information about me, and as being myself. Sympathy can also detract from the goodness of a life. Hume implicitly acknowledges that sympathy can be mistaken. He observes that we sympathize more with people who are nearer than with those who are farther away. Therefore, “it is necessary for us, in our calm judgments . . . to neglect all these differences, and render our sentiments more public and social” (1983, p. 49). Hume might be mistaken in assuming that we sympathize (as feeling for) more strongly with those who are near. In Bleak House, for instance, Charles Dickens ridicules “Telescopic Philanthropy,” in which Mrs. Jellyby pursues her African project to the gross neglect of her children (1956, p. 26 passim). But whether or not we agree about this “geographic” sort of error, Hume is right that sympathy may need correction. Sympathy can go wrong in other ways. Suppose, for instance, that a person has a strongly sympathetic disposition. Recognizing that everyone has the potential to be inward, this person decides that treating people as instrumental to larger goals is wrong. Since harming another or taking a life is intolerable,

110

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

the person becomes a pacifist, and participates with others in a movement to reduce their country’s army, although its neighbors are hostile and ruthless. This activist and colleagues are able to disseminate their pacifist message widely in their country, which is democratic, with an uncensored media. Although the movement has tried to preach pacifism in enemy countries, it makes little headway because they are dictatorships that impose strict controls on their media. The result of the person’s sympathy is to treat the vicious and the victim with the sort of even-handedness that tilts the balance in favor of the vicious. The will of the activists’ country to defend itself weakens, while its enemies remain implacable. Sympathy must be corrected by information and tempered with practical intelligence. Sympathy might send someone organically predisposed to depression over the edge. Even if we are not overwhelmed with another’s misery, the kindness to which sympathy impels us can occupy a great deal of time and energy, and interrupt and detach us from other projects and people more deserving of attention. Unmerited sympathy can result in misplaced allegiances to evil causes and individuals. We can sympathize with sensations and emotions which are absent from the other person. We can perceive benevolence in others where it does not exist. This is sympathy devoid of knowledge of others. Sympathy may also be excessive or unwanted, and violate some bounds. Sympathy is the last thing the Captain in D. H. Lawrence’s story “The Captain’s Doll” wants after the death of his wife: He shrank with a feeling almost of disgust from his friends and acquaintances, and their expressions of sympathy. It affected him with instantaneous disgust when anybody wanted to share emotions with him. He did not want to share emotions or feelings of any sort. He wanted to be by himself, essentially, even if he was moving about among other people. (1976, p. 224) In identifying with another, I can project on him emotions and motives of mine, which disgust me, and so engender dislike of him. If the projection is erroneous, it results in undeserved hostility. In sympathetic identification with another, I can recognize his evil motives, but sympathy can also induce me to see pettiness or malice where it does not exist. This may account for the bitterness of some family feuds. In their familiarity and similarity, each sibling (for instance) “sympathizes” with the other in identifying with and projecting on him his own worst motives and desires. While we should keep these reservations in mind, sympathy remains one of the bases for benevolence, kindness, the disposition to benefit others. In line with Hume’s panegyric, it contributes to the goodness of lives, that of the

Others

111

benevolent and that of the beneficiary. Inwardness, as we have seen, adds a dimension to sympathy. We began this chapter by considering some thoughts of Descartes, Wittgenstein, and Husserl about public language and private knowledge. While I need knowledge of others and a public language to achieve self-knowledge, knowledge of others and a public language are necessarily insufficient to achieve self-knowledge. I cannot learn about inwardness merely by observing others and attending to their words. I also need immediate, private experience of inwardness. A claim for the importance of inwardness for knowledge of others does not depend on the epistemological primacy of self-knowledge. My application of self-knowledge to knowledge of others may be a morally critical later extension, after the initial assimilation of the public language. Whether private knowledge or public language comes first, without inwardness I cannot know inwardness (or its absence) in another. This would be a major deficiency in my knowledge of others. Knowledge of another, as illustrated by the husband’s knowledge of his preoccupied wife, depends on the juxtaposition of inwardness and outwardness. I observe another and connect those observations with what I know about myself. I apply my self-knowledge, including inwardness, to my understanding of the other. Such knowledge goes beyond having information about another. It includes another’s presence to me. This presence is the intensity with which I sense another’s presence to him or herself—inwardness—and is important to some kinds of intimacy. Sympathy usually leads us to be well disposed toward others, and to kind or benevolent actions. Inwardness adds further dimensions to sympathy, deepening and extending it. If I am inward, I can sympathize with others who are inward, and with the feelings their inwardness involve. Further, I not only sympathize with pain or joy, I sympathize with the person as the subject experiencing pain or joy. When familiarity and mutuality are also part of a relationship, intimacy becomes possible. The account of inwardness presented in this work starts with separateness and privacy, with the individual on his or her own, and looking away from the world. It concludes in this chapter with inwardness providing the basis for a more intense outward life. Balance and reciprocity between inwardness and outwardness, and the juxtaposition of the two, makes this possible. Inwardness and its juxtaposition with outwardness are important for selfknowledge. Inwardness and self-knowledge in turn are important for knowledge of others, for sympathy, and for intimacy.

This page intentionally left blank

CONCLUSION We can approach experience in a variety of ways. The approach taken here, to recognize two directions for attention, inward and outward, has proven fruitful. Inwardness has two aspects, separateness, and privacy. These in turn have a variety of forms. Forms of separateness are escapism, solitariness, alienation, disengagement, and some having to do with the body. Forms of privacy are experience of separateness, continuity of personal identity, subjectivity, agency, limits, bodily sensation, and unity. Inwardness is both distinct and cohesive. Inwardness is distinct in that all forms of inwardness have a common direction for attention—away from the world. Inwardness is also distinguishable from reflexiveness, introspection, and self-consciousness. Inwardness is cohesive, in that its aspects and forms comprise a web of interacting and mutually reinforcing experiences, and because experience is inconceivable without the unity of a subject. As one of two realms into which we can divide experience, inwardness is per se important. The main moral importance of inwardness lies in its relation to outwardness. We need a balance between inwardness and outwardness for some elements of a good life. That balance is the prerequisite for developing important moral attributes through reciprocity between and juxtaposition of inwardness and outwardness. In reciprocity, inwardness and outwardness intensify each other. Juxtaposition of intense inwardness and outwardness allows for the development of self-knowledge, knowledge of others, and sympathy. Inwardness contributes to each of the elements of self-knowledge: information about oneself, evaluation of oneself, and presence to oneself. We need an understanding of inwardness to elucidate issues of freedom, and to recognize the complexity of the objects of self-knowledge. Inwardness is often important for outward regard. I need inwardness to move me to act on self-evaluation. Knowledge of others requires knowledge of others’ inwardness, or knowledge that they lack inwardness. Inwardness is the sort of experience I must have for myself. I cannot know another’s inwardness without reference to mine. I must be inward to know some important things about others. Sympathy is important for developing concern and regard for others, and for motivating acts of kindness. In its larger dimension, sympathy requires inwardness. Inwardness is morally important. Much twentieth century philosophy, especially those strains given to fragmenting and externalizing, failed to offer a framework in which we could recognize inwardness. Philosophy that purports to address the goodness of lives is limited and unreliable if it does not consider inwardness.

This page intentionally left blank

Appendix REDUCTIONISM, PERSONAL IDENTITY, AND MORALITY IN PARFIT’S REASONS AND PERSONS In chapter two, I make some points about continuity of personal identity in response to Derek Parfit’s article, “Later Selves and Moral Principles” (1973). Parfit develops his ideas about personal identity more thoroughly and ingeniously in Part 3 of his book, Reasons and Persons (1987/1984). I cited the earlier article in the body of the current work for the sake of proportion and economy of argument. Since Reasons and Persons is the more developed expression, I will comment on that work here. Addressing Parfit’s book will illustrate the approach to personal identity I advocate. As a preliminary note, what Parfit called the Simple View in “Later Selves and Moral Principles,” he termed the Non-Reductionist View in Reasons and Persons. What he called the Complex View in the article, he termed the Reductionist View in his book. Parfit argues that the usual criteria of personal identity, physical and/or psychological connectedness, do not support a strong sense of personal identity, and that this has significant moral implications. Parfit is mistaken. Both the Reductionist View and Non-Reductionist View, and the conclusions Parfit draws from them, miss essential components of personal identity. Recognition of these components leads to a more satisfactory understanding of personal identity than Parfit provides. Here is how Parfit characterizes the Reductionist View which he recommends: [A] person’s identity over time just consists in the holding of certain more particular facts . . .. [T]hese facts can be described without either presupposing the identity of this person, or explicitly claiming that the experiences in this person’s life are had by this person, or even explicitly claiming that this person exists. These facts can be described in an impersonal way. (Ibid., p. 210) [W]e could give a complete description of reality without claiming that persons exist. (Ibid., p. 212) The facts are physical and psychological connectedness and continuity. The physical aspect involves the continuity of the body, especially the brain,

116

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

from one time to another. Psychological connectedness and continuity, which is more important, is the holding of such elements as memories and character traits over time. Memories do not have to be direct, but may involve “overlapping chains.” On Monday I might remember what I had for dinner on Sunday, and on Tuesday I might remember what I ate on Monday, and so on, but by Friday, although I know what I ate on Thursday, I might well have forgotten what I ate on Sunday or Monday. Parfit calls such a chain “continuity,” reserving “connectedness” for direct memories, but the distinction is not needed for my discussion, and I will use the two words virtually interchangeably. According to Parfit, the Non-Reductionist View, in contrast with the Reductionist View, holds that personal identity does not just consist in physical and/or psychological continuity. It involves a deep, further fact. Many Non-Reductionists believe that we are separately existing entities. On this view, personal identity over time does not just consist in physical and/or psychological continuity. It involves a further fact. A person is a separately existing entity, distinct from his brain and body, and his experiences. (Ibid., p. 210) Whereas in the Reductionist View, personal identity is a matter of degree, the degree of the retention of memories and traits, according to the NonReductionist View, personal identity is all-or-nothing. Parfit does not offer a systematic exploration of what an all-or-nothing, deep, further fact might be. He does cite the Cartesian Ego, immortal and independent of a body, as one example, although his account does not rule out a materialist version of the Non-Reductionist View. A way to conceive of Parfit’s distinction might be that a Reductionist would claim that he is (no more than) these memories and traits, while the Non-Reductionist might claim that he is the one who has these memories and traits. Parfit continues to use the word “person” and often speaks in the first person, but he means by this the bundle of connected memories and traits, not the one who has them. The key inference for morality that Parfit draws from this distinction is that the Reductionist View involves the weakening of personal identity over time. Memories fade, we gain new memories, traits change, and so personal identity does not hold steady. Parfit illustrates the discontinuity of personal identity with the case of “The Nineteenth Century Russian,” who has socialist ideals, but in a few years will inherit vast estates. Says Parfit, “[H]e intends, now, to give the land to the peasants. But he knows that in time his ideals may fade.” The Russian devises a strategy to assure that his plan to distribute the land will be implemented, despite what he will become. He wants to outwit his future self. Parfit

Reductionism . . . in Parfit’s Reasons and Persons

117

comments that under such circumstances, “using the language of successive selves, seems both understandable and natural” (ibid., p. 327). In contrast, the Non-Reductionist would deny that it makes sense to speak of earlier and later selves. For the Non-Reductionist, the one who has the memories and traits is the same person. Having established this dichotomy, Parfit considers the emotional and moral consequences of shifting from the Non-Reductionist View (which is the traditional, and, he believes, remains the majority view) to the Reductionist View. One issue is the implication of Reductionism for principles of distribution. Reductionism would give wider scope for those principles, since they would apply not only among lives, but also among stages within lives, among earlier and later selves. To impose burdens on a child for the benefit of the adult he will become would be wrong. By the Reductionist View, distributive principles would, at the same time, be given less weight. Distributive principles would apply to more cases, but be less important, since the boundaries between cases (that is, between persons) would be less distinct. “If some unity [of a life],” asserts Parfit, “is less deep, so is the corresponding disunity [among different lives] . . .. If the fact of personal identity is less deep, so is the fact of non-identity” (ibid., p. 339). The shift from the Non-Reductionist View to the Reductionist View provides what Parfit calls a “Liberation from the Self”: Is the truth [of the Reductionist View] depressing? Some may find it so. But I find it liberating, and consoling. When I believed that my existence was . . . a further fact [according to the Non-Reductionist View], I seemed imprisoned in myself . . .. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others. When I believed the Non-Reductionist View, I also cared more about my inevitable death. After my death, there will [be] no one living who will be me. I can now redescribe this fact. Though there will later be many experiences, none of these experiences will be connected to my present experiences by chains of such direct connections as those involved in experience-memory, or in the carrying out of an earlier intention . . .. My death will break the direct relations between my present experiences and future experiences, but it will not break various other relations. This is all there is to the fact that there will be no one living who will be me. Now that I have seen this, my death seems to me less bad. Instead of saying, “I shall be dead,” I should say, “There will be no future experiences that will be related, in certain ways, to these present ex-

118

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY periences.” Because it reminds me what this fact involves, this redescription makes this fact less depressing. (Ibid., pp. 281–282)

On matters of desert and commitment, Parfit argues “for the general claim that, if the connections are weaker between a criminal now and himself at the time of his crime, he deserves less punishment. Similar claims appl[y] to commitment” (ibid., p. 347). A major part of Parfit’s argument on behalf of the Reductionist View rests on a series of “thought experiments” in the realms of science fiction and surgical fancy. He imagines variations on teletransportation and replication of himself on Mars. Other cases arise from the notion that the halves of a brain can be divided, remaining either within one body or each half inserted separately into others, each fully able to carry memories and traits to its new body. Still others involve the piecemeal replacement of brain tissue or of memories and traits. The underlying point of these cases is that we would be mistaken to insist on an all-or-nothing answer to the question, whether the result would or would not be me. It makes more sense, Parfit suggests, to simply describe the quantitative facts. Such cases clarify only if they involve adequate conceptions of persons. To speak quantitatively of brain transplants and mental transfers is useful only if such notions bear a reasonable resemblance to how minds work or could work. For example, Parfit supposes that his psychological connectedness is replaced bit by bit by Greta Garbo’s. He suggests that to ask at any degree of replacement whether the result is or is not me, is a mistake. Instead, we should describe the facts, how much Garbo, how much me (ibid., p. 237). Parfit’s approach to personal identity is too quantitative and mechanical. A mixture of Garbo and me, if it somehow can be hypothesized, would not be a proportion between the two of us, but something different from both of us, something new. That is closer to how persons are than is a sliding proportion. One does not just change, say, a quarter of one’s character traits and memories while leaving the remainder untouched. The elements of our minds are too organically related for that. Change a fraction, and the rest, and the whole, shifts. Reductive cases may mislead us in a search for what we think or ought to think about personal identity. We should not treat personal identity externally, and draw the moral consequences from that consideration. From the start we should consider personal identity from an internal perspective. When we do, the dichotomy between Reductionism and Non-Reductionism is less important than Parfit makes it. He overlooks three facts of personal identity––deep, further ones in their own right––which undermine his dichotomy and should lead us to reject the argument he advances. First, Parfit separates experiences from the person who has them. Second, he fails to recognize adequately the complex variability of connectedness

Reductionism . . . in Parfit’s Reasons and Persons

119

and continuity, and the deep, further fact that I can do something about my connectedness. The third deep, further fact that he overlooks is that an aspect of experience, subjectivity, does, throughout most of most lives, remain quite constant. These three facts may be attributed to either the Reductionist or the Non-Reductionist View in a way that makes the distinction between the two Views morally unimportant. 1. Personal Experience The first fact of personal identity that Parfit misses is that experiences are inseparable from the person who has them. Initially, Parfit’s claim about experience sounds merely like his basic distinction between the NonReductionist and the Reductionist Views: “On the Reductionist View, personal identity just involves physical and psychological continuity . . .. These two kinds of continuity can be described without claiming that experiences are had by a person” (ibid., p. 275). But Parfit also says that we can think about experiences by themselves, apart from persons, and make public policy on such grounds: These [Reductionist] beliefs support certain moral claims. It becomes more plausible, when thinking morally, to focus less upon the person, the subject of experiences, and instead to focus more upon the experiences themselves. It becomes more plausible to claim that, just as we are right to ignore whether people come from the same or different nations, we are right to ignore whether experiences come within the same or different lives. (Ibid., p. 341) If we cease to believe that persons are separately existing entities, and come to believe that the unity of a life involves no more than the various relations between the experiences in this life, it becomes more plausible to be more concerned about the quality of experiences, and less concerned about whose experiences they are. (Ibid., p. 346) Parfit’s underlying idea is mistaken. We cannot divorce experiences from the person who has them, whether we conceive of a “person” as one who has experiences according to the Non-Reductionist View or as a bundle of connected experiences and traits according to the Reductionist View. In the second case, we need only recognize that any new experience cannot be divorced from the existing bundle of experiences and traits. The bundle will be important in determining new experiences. It will largely determine the field of experience, and influence strongly the nature of any new experience. A person brings memories and traits to a new experience. The nature of any life-long experience, such as marriage, parenthood, or a profession, de-

120

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

pends on a person’s character and memories. The same is true of more immediate experiences. Viewers’ experiences of an exhibition of paintings largely depend on what they bring to it—their training and sophistication, their beliefs about painting, their familiarity with the painter’s work, the reading they have done about the painter, their different capacities for attention, their sensitivities and sensibilities, the particular associations they have with elements of different paintings. For this reason, different persons’ experiences of the same exhibition will be quite different. An attempt to consider most experiences apart from persons (“persons” according to either the Non-Reductionist or the Reductionist View) must fail. Most experiences cannot be distributed by others or be made good or bad simply by external assignment and intervention. A person, then, the bundle of memories and traits, significantly determines new experiences. New experiences, in turn, affect the person. They do this not by mere addition, but by modifying the whole body of experiences and traits. Usually in subtle ways, but possibly dramatically, and without obliterating what has gone before, they can alter the weight of memories and traits, and they shift perspectives. The belief that we can separate experiences from persons explains Parfit’s claim that the Reductionist View makes him more altruistic (ibid., p. 281, quoted above). If my experiences are less tightly mine, then, by comparison, others’ experiences are less distant, less distinct from mine. Experience is homogenized, so that my and others’ experiences are less different to me than they used to be. This is mistaken as well. No doubt, my experiences would be less important to me if my personal identity was diluted, but why should others’ experiences thereby become more important? My sympathy for others can be stimulated and informed by the importance of my experience to me. I care about others and their experiences by virtue of caring about mine. If I grant little importance to mine, why would I give much importance to theirs? If the prospect of my death has little sting, another’s death may easily be shrugged off. We should not assume that if I care less about myself, I will care more about others. Why should the weakening of internal connections strengthen external connections, as if there were a fixed quantity of connectedness, which, if it did not flow in one direction, would flow in the other? Often, the more anchored I am in myself, the more present I am to myself, the more I will care about others, since self-anchoring enables me to understand how others feel about themselves, and to value others in a way that is informed by what I know about myself. We should not confuse self-awareness with selfishness.

Reductionism . . . in Parfit’s Reasons and Persons

121

2. Activity Parfit overlooks a second deep, further fact about personal identity. I can do something about my connectedness. I can strengthen my connectedness, or strengthen some of it. In Parfit’s science fiction and surgery, and in his quantified hypothesizing about memories and traits, the body, brain, and mind are passive sufferers of alterations imposed from without. The alterations are done to them or imposed on them, physically, externally. Parfit might counter that these hypothetical, imposed changes are but analogies for what does happen in our lives. Their value is that they reflect reality: the weakening of connectedness, especially psychological connectedness, over time. His point is that the relations of earlier to later selves in lives are like transfers of memory and transplants of brain tissues. The cases are apt because they help recognize such facts. This is exactly the problem. Parfit attributes universal passivity to actual persons. His cases represent, in the matter of passivity, just what he holds about actual lives. For him, actual people are just as impotent before the forces of change in themselves as his teleportees and surgical subjects. Indeed, “impotent” is too weak, since it implies an attempt, albeit unsuccessful, or a hope, albeit vain, to do something. Parfit does not address the issue. He does not name passivity, but assumes it. Throughout Part 3 of Reasons and Persons (ibid.), as in “Later Selves and Moral Principles” (1973), Parfit fails to consider the possibility of taking an active role about connectedness. His most active instance is his young nineteenth-century Russian heir, but this instance illustrates what is wrong. The Russian does not conceive of maintaining his principles. He is helpless before the despised inevitable changes in himself. That is why he must outwit his future self. The possibility of actively connecting his future self to his current character and intentions does not arise. Parfit seems to believe that psychological connectedness erodes generally and inexorably. Connectedness is always getting weaker. He says, “Since connectedness is nearly always weaker over longer periods, I can rationally care less about my further future” (1987/1984, p. 313). In another place he states, “If we are Reductionists, we may compare the weakening of the connections between the child and his adult self to the absence of connections between different people” (ibid., p. 333). The parts of the same life are or may be, he says, “weakly connected” (ibid., p. 346). Parfit adds: [W]hat is important in personal identity, psychological connectedness, holds over time to reduced degrees. When some important fact holds to a reduced degree, it cannot be irrational to believe this fact to have less importance.” (Ibid., pp. 346–347)

122

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

The reality is more complex than a supposed broad weakening of connectedness over time. Since Parfit quotes Marcel Proust to illustrate the idea that lives are made up of earlier and later selves (ibid., p. 305), I will develop the contrary view with the help of the same writer. I have in mind the familiar incident concluding the Overture to “Swann’s Way” in Remembrance of Things Past (Proust, 1982, pp. 47–51), of the tea and madeleine, when the lost past is retrieved. The narrator initially has little connectedness with his past. He muses, “To me it was in reality all dead. Permanently dead? Very possibly” (ibid.). The narrator laments, “to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile” (ibid.). But then, in taking some tea and a “petite madeleine,” an exquisite pleasure invades the narrator’s senses, the vicissitudes of his current life become indifferent. He says: I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? . . . What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?” (Ibid.) He tries and tries again to bring the recollection to consciousness. “And suddenly the memory revealed itself” (ibid.). The taste of the cake and tea he is having now, as an adult: was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray . . . when I [as a child] went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Leonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea . . .. (Ibid.) The present taste links him with a taste from the distant past, “the vast structure of recollection, . . . the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and garden alike, from my cup of tea” (ibid.). The lost connection with the past is regained. The title of Marcel Proust’s work, in the original French, is A la Recherche du Temps Perdu (1954), the literal translation of which is In Search of Lost Time. Absent the Shakespearean resonance of “remembrance of things past” (from Sonnet 30), the literal translation expresses activity, not the passivity that Parfit attributes to memory. To varying degrees and by varying aspects, depending on my character and circumstances, I can retrieve the past. Connectedness is not subject to a relentless process of erosion that works in proportion to the passage of time and makes me its passive sufferer. I can allow and perhaps encourage erosion of some traits and memories. I can maintain others. I may, as Proust’s narrator does, retrieve and enhance still others. In all this, I can be active.

Reductionism . . . in Parfit’s Reasons and Persons

123

I can assert, maintain, and enhance the continuity of my life in many ways. Instead of absolving myself of the need to keep a promise by claiming that I am no longer the person who made it, I can reaffirm and strengthen my connectedness precisely by keeping the promise. I can hold myself responsible for my past acts. I can maintain connections to the past or to selected portions of it by recapitulating, recording, reevaluating memories. I can also do something about connections to the future. I can prepare for it. I can commit to developing my character, recognizing that doing so is a lifetime endeavor. Instead of trying to outwit his later self, the nineteenth century Russian could work at becoming the person he wants to be so that in the future he could carry out his intentions even better than he does now. I can maintain a diary, take photographs, or make tapes, so that in the future experiences and beliefs will be retrievable. A society can take measures to encourage the connectedness of its members. Parfit suggests not punishing the criminal for a past act. But punishment or its prospect may be just the needed restorative for the criminal and, through his example, for others, of connectedness with the past. Punishment is likely, as the lawyer’s phrase goes, to help “refresh his memory.” Failure to punish, then, may encourage weakness and erosion of connectedness. A society may need to hold a criminal accountable not only for his crime, but for the weakness of his connectedness. In this light, we have a strengthened conception of accountability. A society that neglects this point may be welcoming its unraveling. What Parfit considers the inevitable and universal case is a diagnosis of what can and often does go wrong: weak and weaker connections. An attribution of inevitability to weak connections can only make things worse, a selffulfilling prophecy of personal and social dissolution. Suppose, for instance, that Smith and Jones together commit a horrible crime, but since Smith has no conscience, his memory of the crime weakens more rapidly than does Jones’s, whose conscience troubles him. Should society reward Smith for his lack of conscience by less punishment? More likely, society should punish him more severely. Doing something about continuity is not all-or-nothing. I can do more or less. That I can do something is itself a “deep, further fact” of personal identity—not a metaphysical fact, but a moral one. This fact has far-reaching consequences for morality that point in a direction quite different from the inferences Parfit draws about morality from the Reductionist View of personal identity. This comment is relevant to Part 3 of Reasons and Persons. Near the end of the book, in the “Concluding Chapter,” Parfit seems to recognize doing something about continuity as an afterthought: I shall now add a similar claim. On the Non-Reductionist View, the deep unity of each life is automatically ensured, however randomly, short-

124

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY sightedly, and passively this life is lived. On the Reductionist View, the unity of our lives is a matter of degree, and is something we can affect. We may want our lives to have greater unity, in the way that an artist may want to create a unified work. And we can give our lives greater unity, in ways that express our particular values and beliefs. Since the Reductionist View gives more importance to how we choose to live, and to what distinguishes different people, this is a second way in which it is more personal. (1987/1984, pp. 446–447)

This is an important point added late and too briefly. Parfit should have developed the thought further. It runs counter to many of his arguments and cases, such as teletransportation, replication, surgery, and ancestral and descendent selves, all of which involve thorough passivity. Parfit fails to incorporate the far-reaching consequences of understanding persons as able to be active about the unity of their lives. Doing so would require major revisions in Part 3. For example, if a person can make a unity of his life, he can do something about his connectedness. We can then hold him responsible for his connectedness or its loss. He is punishable for his loss of connection with a past crime. It may be in the interest of justice and the order of society that he be punished in order to maintain and restore connections. This places some of the major moral issues elsewhere than in the distinction between NonReductionism and Reductionism. 3. Constant Subjectivity A third deep, further fact about personal identity that Parfit neglects is that the sense of oneself as the subject of experiences is constant. Any experience has two poles, an inward one, and an outward one. The outward pole is of the object of the experience. The inward pole is of oneself as the subject of the experience. I sense myself in having the experience. Two poles are present even when the experience is reflexive. In that case, the outward one becomes oneself as the object of the experience, while the subjective pole stays the same. Memories of the objects of experiences tend to erode, although they may be maintained, retrieved, enhanced, as already described, and I may be active in doing so. The inward pole, the sense of myself as subject of those experiences, is different. It remains constant. I sense it as the same subject looking, listening one way or another, or another. Memories of the objects of experience probably tend to fade because the objects tumble by, continually replacing each other. They change whenever I shift my attention. On the other hand, memory of myself as subject of all my experiences does not fade because the subject remains the same. The sense of myself as subject is reiterated endlessly, continuously, or at least scores of times each day, and so the memory is constant. I may experience the sense of

Reductionism . . . in Parfit’s Reasons and Persons

125

myself as subject with varying intensity, but the sense is always available, always with the same subject. This explanation is consistent with a Reductionist View. The Non-Reductionist would have additional reasons for the constancy, although she would have no reason to object to this reason. In this, I could warrant the accusation that I have assumed that subjectivity remains the same, past, present, and future. What I am arguing is that I experience myself as a constant subject. If a change does occur in my subjectivity, it happens imperceptibly, and with a backward projection, so that my sense of subjectivity remains the same. To demonstrate this, I do not offer “thought experiments” (which, with their simplifications and removal from contexts, are usually misleading and impoverishing for an understanding of morality), but suggest introspection. My earliest memories, for instance, go back to the age of three: a hospitalization, the birth of a sibling, being frightened in nursery school. In each of these, and in all subsequent events as I remember them, the sense of myself as subject is the same; a constant. The one who was in the hospital at the age of three I remember as having a continuous and unchanged subjectivity with myself now, more than half a century later. I know that in innumerable ways, I now am different from that three-year-old, but I do not distinguish his subjectivity in feeling from mine now. His subjectivity in his experience is mine, my subjectivity is his. I suspect almost all experience is this way. This is not a proof, but an appeal to the reader to examine his or her personal experience. I say “almost all” experience. The exceptions are, on one side, the trailing off of memory before the age of three, and, on the other, physical or psychological damage so severe as to threaten personhood on anyone’s terms. Consider a common experience, of having been in a room as a small child, and then of returning to the same room as an adult. We are bewildered—fascinated—by the conflicting impressions, of the huge room we remember, and the small room we are in now, while we know intellectually that the room has not changed. Presumably, the reason for the disparate perceptions is that we form each perception by comparison to our physical size at the time of each experience. The difference is bewildering because the sense of oneself as subject of the differing perceptions is unchanged. This sense of the constancy of subjectivity, and that I sense it throughout my life as mine, is a deep, further fact of personal identity. The significance of experiencing it as mine may be illustrated in my attitude toward death. Recall that Parfit strives to minimize his death by making it impersonal: My death will break the more direct relations between my present experiences and future experiences, but it will not break various other relations. This is all there is to the fact that there will be no one living who will be me.” (Ibid., p. 281)

126

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

But death is not just a question of the directness of relations among experiences. The kind of experience is also involved in the prospect of death. After my death, no one will have experiences in which I sense myself as their subject. This is a whole class of experiences unique to me, as indicated by the use of the possessive, “my.” The constancy of the sense of myself as their subject makes my termination different and important to me. The difference between my being alive or being dead goes beyond the directness of the relations among experiences: the class of experiences particular to me, those that I experience throughout my life, in which I sense myself as their subject, will cease with my death. Parfit describes the change from the Non-Reductionist to the Reductionist View as relieving, especially in the face of death. He speaks of “my natural concern for my future” (ibid., p. 282). When facing death, reconvincing himself of the Reductionist View “stuns” that natural concern. Apparently, we have to convince ourselves repeatedly in face of the natural concern. Why is repeated self-convincing required, especially if the Reductionist View relieves pain? If the Reductionist View does relieve pain, we ought to have a natural inclination toward it. We might also question whether much good can be expected of being stunned. “Stunned” has two basic senses. One is “amazed” or “surprised,” but this is not what Parfit intends, since he is thoroughly familiar with the Reductionist View. He must mean the other sense, which is to be rendered unconscious or dazed—a form of anaesthesia. But anaesthesia only kills pain. It should not determine a moral theory. Parfit returns several times to the need to reconvince himself of Reductionism: “Many people would be afraid of Teletransportation. I admit that, at some level, I might be afraid. But, as I have argued, such fear cannot be rational” (ibid., p. 285). He refers to the “natural fear” of replicating himself from earth to Mars instead of taking the conventional space-ship journey, and finds the tenacity of this fear irrational (ibid., p. 286). If the Reductionist View were correct, it would be able to offer an explanation for the fear and its tenacity, in Reductive terms, the same terms that label it irrational. Parfit acknowledges the fear, and suggests that it exists because of the evolutionary advantage it offers. But animals fear sources of pain and death, probably without fearing death per se. The fear of the sources secures the evolutionary advantage without the fear of termination of self. Parfit offers no explanation for the kind of hold the fear has on us. The deep, further fact that experiences cannot be considered apart from a person and what a person brings to them, the deep, further fact that we can be active about our continuity, and the deep, further fact of sensing oneself as subject, together engender a concern for the future and death. They are morally important since they are the ground for personal growth and refinement. The growth and refinement of its members is also what any society above a primitive state of nature requires.

Reductionism . . . in Parfit’s Reasons and Persons

127

Why should I want continuity? What might motivate me to act on the ability to do something about it? We might refer to Parfit’s description of the Non-Reductionist View for an answer, to an all-or-nothing, deep, further fact of personal identity. But we do not have to. My three deep, further facts are adequate. Part of the explanation is prior connectedness. If a person (“person” according to either View) has that connectedness, he or she may value it in itself and also recognize the benefits it makes possible: a life above the most elemental and formulaic. The evolutionary advantage and the interest of a person’s family and society might explain an initial measure of connectedness before she is ready to make such choices for herself. Another part of the motivation lies in the relations among the three deep, further facts offered here. The sense of the continuity of myself as subject and the tie between me and my experiences make having a life for myself conceivable. They encourage me as agent to assert and strengthen continuity. They impel me to try to make that life good. 4. Commentators Although he believes a natural concern for our future can be overcome, Parfit acknowledges the resilience of the concern. He needs to “stun” his fear of death, by reconvincing himself of the metaphysics that makes it less important. Writers on Parfit have addressed the intractability of self-concern. Several of the papers collected in Reading Parfit argue that self-concern is natural and prima facie reasonable, and that personal identity is unavoidable in thinking about action and agency (Dancy, 1997). They challenge the relevance of metaphysics to concern for future self, its effectiveness in overcoming selfconcern, and the desirability of doing so. In “Rational Egoism and the Separateness of Persons,” David O. Brink finds no general reason to suppose that Parfit’s claim for personal identity’s being metaphysically “less deep” on the reductionist account affects the justification of concern for one’s future self, “This is because our concern about some entity or property may attach to its functional role, rather than to its metaphysical or compositional analysans” (1997, p. 117). Beyond Brink’s distinction between functional role and analysans, we need to ask, what impels me to care about my future self despite the metaphysics? The three further facts of personal identity offered above provide a basis in universal experience for concern, for putting flesh on the bones of “functional role.” Sydney Shoemaker observes: [W]hile Parfit seems to saddle reductionists with the burden of either justifying their special concern or admitting that it is irrational, we are told nothing about why personal identity would matter at all, or about

128

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY why special concern would be justified at all, if non-reductionism were true . . .. (1997, p. 146)

The three further facts I have described are reasons why, on either the Reductionist or the Non-Reductionist account. That they hold either way suggests that the distinction between Reductionism and Non-Reductionism is not especially relevant to personal identity and to the attendant moral issues. In “Human Concerns without Superlative Selves,” Mark Johnston examines the “justificatory undergirdings of our practices,” and asks, “How much should the discovery that we have a false metaphysical view of our nature impact upon our practical concern with survival?” (1997, p. 149). According to Johnston, metaphysics is irrelevant to such a concern: [N]othing can be made of the mere absence of superlative further facts [presented in a Non-Reductionist account]. Hence the practical irrelevance of the sheer claim that the ordinary further facts are “less deep” than the superlative further facts . . .. If such an observation were by itself sufficient to discredit our practices, then all the concerns which have a purchase in the manifest world and cannot be captured as concerns about collections of microphysical facts would be discredited. Philosophy would have won an all too automatic, and probably Pyrrhic, victory over human life. It would have to begin again by scaling its standards of justification down to human size. (Ibid., p. 155) The constancy of sensing myself as subject, the organic relation between the existing body of experience and new experience, and the ability to influence my continuity are part of the human-size justification. The metaphysical controversy may be intriguing, but the human scale does not depend on its resolution. Parfit goes from metaphysical assertion to moral conclusion, missing the central issue, experience. When he does consider experience, as in the notion that if I cared less about my life I would care more about others’ lives, the consideration is in crude terms. Johnston argues that self-concern and concern for my future exists, and is natural, and so is to be accepted prima facie as justified. He describes natural concern as radiating outward, in a continuum: present self, future self, friends, family, neighborhood, community, and so forth: Who would suppose that non-derivative concern for our friends and acquaintances depends for its justification upon substantive metaphysical views about the relation of friendship and the relation of familiarity? Just as these concerns require only the ordinary fact that one has friends and acquaintances, so self-concern seems only to require the ordinary fact that one exists and will exist. (Ibid., p. 159)

Reductionism . . . in Parfit’s Reasons and Persons

129

We need to be cautious here. We should not overlook important differences between self-concern and concern with what is outside us in making the point that both types of concern are natural. The three facts which I have described pertain to myself, and not to my relation with another except indirectly, insofar as I use self-awareness to develop knowledge of and feeling for another. In addition, we need to examine what Johnston cites as the “natural tendency” to identify with a future self. The components of that natural tendency, such as the facts I have described, are themselves morally important. It will not do to offer the naturalistic explanation for self-concern, the evolutionary advantage, which Parfit cites. Such an explanation says little about what is crucial to me in my self-concern or in the experiences that engender, encourage, or reinforce my self-concern, or that point to different ways in which self-concern affects my life. Simon Blackburn describes a “unity reaction” which is not far from Johnston’s natural tendency to be concerned about oneself. In “Has Kant Refuted Parfit?” Blackburn says, “The question ‘How will it be for me?’ maintains an absolute, but formal, grip on” practical reasoning (1997, p. 183). He challenges Parfit’s tenet “that whatever the original motivations towards the unity reaction, we can train ourselves out of it, and that it would be better, both metaphysically and even ethically, if we did” (ibid., p. 182). The challenge is Kantian: “the unity of the self as forced by the need to acknowledge” the standpoint of “the active subject of thought and action” (ibid., p. 182). Suppose that among the states making up a normal life are selfconscious thoughts, activities and imaginings that depend upon a conception of the self and its future and past existence. Suppose these thoughts included those indicated by the unity reaction. Then it would be as if the Parfitian self (small s) depended for its existence on people thinking, wrongly, in terms of an irreducible Self (capital S). The threat is that enough basic thoughts involve a self-conception that cannot be built on Humean or Parfitian atoms . . .. [W]e have no way of contemplating a change: giving up whatever conception of the Self they involve would be giving up thinking altogether. (Ibid., p. 186) The possibility Blackburn raises, that the conception of the self on which we depend has a, “flavour of illusion” (ibid., p. 198), leads me to suggest that the facts I have cited are not illusory but well-grounded in experience. We need not rely on a metaphysical fiction. In response to Parfit’s claim that the Reductionist View of personal identity breaks the “glass wall” separating himself from others, resulting in less concern with self and more with general utility, Blackburn observes:

130

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY [t]he situation that I am in as a practical reasoner is always first a situation in which I have to decide what I should do. If, inside that perspective, particular boundaries between myself and others become salient, it is impossible to believe that this is to be regretted. (Ibid., p. 199)

I would add that concern for self may be the basis for concern for others. Some sort of wall or separation between oneself and others may be needed for communication and sympathy. In “Reductionism and the First Person,” John McDowell cites the “continuity of ‘consciousness’”: what appears to be knowledge of an identity, the persistence of the same subject through time, without any need to take care that attention stays fixed on the same thing. Contrast keeping one’s thought focused on an ordinary object of perception over a period; this requires a skill, the ability to keep track of something . . .. (1997, p. 232) This seems close to what I have described as the constancy of the sense of oneself as subject, although I have in mind the subjective experience, McDowell, perhaps, a more objective claim. A caution is also in order here. While the sense of myself as subject is always with me, or always available to me, the intensity with which we feel it varies from person to person, and from one time to another within one person. This variation is morally important, since it may affect the goodness of lives. It may also influence philosophical approaches. For instance, those in whom the sense of subjectivity is less intense may be those whose sense of personal identity is weaker and who may lean toward a reductionist account of personal identity. It could also work the other way: a person whose sense of subjectivity is intense might prefer a reductionist account, to relieve the burdensome awareness of self. McDowell emphasizes the inextricability of personal identity from its context in the world. In this, McDowell opposes both the Cartesian and Parfit’s outlook, since Parfit’s reductionism depends on a Cartesian abstraction of self from the world. McDowell holds that consciousness cannot be selfcontained. “[R]emoval of context makes it impossible to keep ‘consciousness’ itself in view.” (Ibid., p. 235) We need to be cautious here as well. While we cannot abstract consciousness from a worldly context, a difference in kind exists between attention to self and attention to the world––as I think is implicit in McDowell’s noting that outward attention requires skill, while inward attention comes of itself. In any case, McDowell’s embedding of personal identity and selfconcern in the world points to a need for further exploration, of the interaction of the two different kinds of awareness, of the world, and of oneself.

Reductionism . . . in Parfit’s Reasons and Persons

131

For morality, in addition to rigor and incisiveness, we need sensitivity to experience. This raises the possibility that the best arbiters of personal identity are poets and novelists, those who have a well-developed sensitivity to experience, and the ability to describe it. Philosophic and literary intelligence must supplement each other. Such sensitivity is largely missing from Parfit’s account, and made the harder to attain by his use of surgical and science fiction thought experiments. The foregoing discussion suggests the following conception of personal identity over time as it affects morality. We may or may not treat personal identity as only a matter of psychological connectedness and continuity. We can but do not have to consider it as an all-or-nothing, deep, further metaphysical fact. Personal identity does have its kind of deep, further facts. One further fact is that a person significantly influences the nature of his or her experiences. Another further fact is that a person can do something about the connectedness and continuity of memory and character. I can have plans, assume responsibility, make commitments, and fulfill them. The context for this agency is complex. I may lose track of or actively suppress some memories and character traits while maintaining others, and while retrieving, enhancing, strengthening yet others. Still another deep, further fact is that I sense myself as the subject of experience. Within the boundaries of early childhood on one side and grave trauma or deterioration on the other, this sense of myself as subject is a constant, although the intensity with which I sense myself as subject may vary. These three facts provide a foundation for acting on my identity as a life-long concern. Given such facts, acting well requires sensitivity to experience. These facts, which are matters of degree, are deeper and further than Parfit’s Reductionist View allows. We can also understand them as in important ways deeper and further than anything all-or-nothing according to the Non-Reductionist View. They include ideas of experience, agency, and subjectivity that an all-or-nothing fact could omit, in that an immortal, independent ego, depending on how constituted, could lack them. This renders the distinction between the Reductionist View and the Non-Reductionist View unimportant. If agency, subjectivity, and the tie of experience to person required the Non-Reductionist View, then the Reductionist View would have to be abandoned. But that is not my claim. My claim is that what is important is the agency and subjectivity and the tie of experience to person, not the Reductionist View vs. The Non-Reductionist View. That opposition is a dispute about words.

This page intentionally left blank

WORKS CITED Note: Where two dates are given, the first is the publication of the edition cited, the second the date of original publication. Aristotle. (1985) Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Terence Irwin. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing Co. Augustine of Hippo. (1960) The Confessions of St. Augustine. Translated by John K. Ryan. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995) The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology. New York: Harper Collins. Bayley, John. (1999) Elegy for Iris. New York: Picador USA. Blackburn, Simon. (1997) “Has Kant Refuted Parfit?” In Dancy, Reading Parfit. Brink, David O. (1997) “Rational Egoism and the Separateness of Persons.” In Dancy, Reading Parfit. Carnap, Rudolf. (1963/1935) Philosophy and Logical Syntax. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner. Camus, Albert. (1942) The Stranger (orig. French, L’ Étranger). New York: Vintage, Random House. Dancy, Jonathan, ed. (1997) Reading Parfit. Oxford: Blackwell. Descartes, René. (1988) Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings. Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugold Murdoch. Cambridge, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press. ———. (1988) Discourse on Method. In Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings. ———. (1988) Meditations on First Philosophy. In Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings. ———. (1988) Principles of Philosophy. In Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings. Dickens, Charles. (1956/1853) Bleak House. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin. Dickinson, Emily. (1960/1890) “The Bee.” In The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, and Company. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. (1960/1864) Notes from Underground. Translated by Ralph E. Matlaw. NewYork: E.P. Dutton. Eliot, T. S. (1972/1932) “Hamlet.” In Selected Essays. London: Faber and Faber. Flexner, Stuart Berg. (1987) The Random House Dictionary of the English Language. 2nd ed., unabridged. New York: Random House. Frankfurt, Harry G. (1988/1971) “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person.” In The Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich. (1859) Oblomov: Roman V Chetyrekh Chastiakh. St. Peterbung, Russia: V Tipografii I. I. Glazunova. Hamlyn, David. (1983) “Self-Knowledge.” In Perception, Learning and the Self. London: Routledge. Hampshire, Stuart. (1983/1959) Thought and Action. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press. Hume, David. (1962/1776) On Human Nature and the Understanding. Edited by Antony Flew. New York: Collier Books, Macmillan.

134

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

———. (1983/1751) An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett. Husserl, Edmund. (1964/1907) The Idea of Phenomenology. Translated by William P. Alston, and George Nakhnikian. The Hague, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff. Johnston, Mark. (1997) “Human Concerns without Superlative Selves.” In Dancy. Reading Parfit. Joyce, James. (1922) Ulysses. Paris, Shakespeare and Company. ———. (1926/1914) Dubliners. New York: The Modern Library. ———. (1939) Finnegan’s Wake. New York: Penguin. ———. (1956/1916) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Viking Press. Kekes, John. (1995) Moral Wisdom and Good Lives. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Kierkegaard, Søren. (1954/1843) Fear and Trembling. Translated by Walter Lowrie. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. ———. (1954/1849) The Sickness unto Death. Translated by Walter Lowrie. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. ———. (1941/1846) Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Translated by David F. Swenson, and Walter Lowrie. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Lawrence, D. H. (1976/1923) “The Captain’s Doll.” In Four Short Novels. New York: Penguin. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. (1951/1714) The Monadology. in Leibniz: Selections. Edited by Philip P. Wiener. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Lucretius, Titus Carus. (1951) The Nature of the Universe. Translated by R. E. Latham. New York: Penguin Books. McDowell, John. (1997) “Reductionism and the First Person.” In Dancy. Reading Parfit. Mill, John Stuart. (1987/1863) Utilitarianism. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus. Montefiore, Alan, ed. (1973) Philosophy and Personal Relations. Montreal, Canada: McGill Queen’s University Press. Murdoch, Iris. (1970) The Sovereignty of Good. London: Routledge. Nagel, Thomas. (1979) “Brain Bisection and the Unity of Consciousness.” In Mortal Questions. ———. “Moral Luck.” In Mortal Questions. ———. Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. “What Is It Like To Be a Bat?” In Mortal Questions. Parfit, Derek. (1973) “Later Selves and Moral Principles.” In Philosophy and Personal Relations. Edited by Alan Montefiore. Montreal, Canada: McGill Queen’s University Press. ———. (1987/1984) Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Piaget, Jean. (1960/1947) Psychology of Intelligence. Translated by Malcolm Piercy, and D. E. Berlyne. Paterson, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams. Plato. (1961) Phaedo, Philebus, Protagoras. In Plato: The Collected Dialogues. Edited by Edith Hamilton, and Huntington Cairns. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Proust, Marcel. (1982) Remembrance of Things Past. Translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff, and Terence Kilmartin. New York: Vintage. Proust, Marcel. (1954) A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Paris: Gallimard. Rilke, Rainer Maria. (1939/1922) A letter of Rilke’s from the period 1914–1921, quoted in J. B. Leishman. “Introduction.” In Duino Elegies. Translated by J. B. Leishman, and Stephen Spender. New York: W. W. Norton.

Works Cited

135

Rorty, Amelie O., ed. (1976) The Identities of Persons. Berkeley: The University of California Press. Russell, Bertrand. (1929) Mysticism and Logic. New York: W. W. Norton. Sartre, Jean-Paul. (1960/1937) The Transcendence of the Ego. New York: Hill and Wang. Shoemaker, Sydney. (1997) “Parfit on Identity.” In Dancy. Reading Parfit. Smith, Adam. “Letter from Adam Smith to William Strahan.” In Hume, On Human Nature and the Understanding. Taylor, Charles. (1976) “Responsibility for Self.” In Rorty, The Identities of Persons. ———. (1989) Sources of the Self. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Tolstoy, Leo. (1961/1877) Anna Karenina. Translated by David Magarshack. New York: Signet. Unamuno, Miguel de. (1954/1921) Tragic Sense of Life. Translated by J. E. Crawford Fitch. New York: Dover Publications. Williams, Bernard. (1981) “Persons, Character and Morality.” in Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (1922) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by Frank Plumpton Ramsey and C. K. Ogden. Routledge and Kegan Paul. ———. (1968) “Notes for Lectures on ‘Private Experience’ and ‘Sense Data.’” Philosophical Review, 77: 3.

This page intentionally left blank

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Eric Wolf Fried began to read philosophy as an undergraduate majoring in literature at Columbia University in the 1950s. He began philosophy as a disciplined pursuit at the State University of New York at Albany during the last decade. This is his first published work in philosophy. He has previously published poetry and fiction in literary journals. Fried took coursework in the sciences at the City University of New York. He studied wildlife biology and natural resources management in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University in the 1960s. He supported his family and acquainted himself with public affairs and the natural world in a thirty-year career as a wildlife biologist in the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Fried is married to Joanna Kirby Meigs Fried, with whom he has four grown children.

This page intentionally left blank

INDEX action(s), 4, 19, 23, 29–31, 40–47, 52, 56, 63, 69, 70, 72, 75, 76, 78–86, 88, 89, 103, 105, 111, 127, 129 failure to act, 70 activity(ies), 4, 7, 9, 10, 16, 25, 42, 47, 71, 109, 102, 122, 129 mental (events), 20 physical, 35, 36 agency, 1, 4, 20, 29–31, 36, 40, 44, 47, 48, 53, 54, 56, 61, 62, 68–71, 77–79, 85, 96–99, 102–104, 107, 108, 113, 127, 131 akrásia, 83, 84, 86 alienation, 1, 8, 14, 15, 18, 36, 39, 51, 54, 70, 77, 78, 105, 113 analysans, 127 Aristotle, 25, 29, 33–35, 54–57, 60–62, 64, 83, 84 Augustine of Hippo, 29, 32, 61, 62, 64, 65 balance (between inwardness and outwardness), 1, 38–40, 43, 45, 48, 51–57, 64–66, 68, 75, 78, 79, 82, 88, 100, 111, 113. See also proportion benefits of, 56, 57, 69 Hamlyn’s concept of, 56, 57 imbalance, 57, 66 Bayley, John, 63, 64 being oneself (being myself), 56, 64, 78, 79, 85, 102, 103, 109 benevolence, 105, 106, 110 blind man, 91, 92 blindness, 78, 85, 93 Blackburn, Simon, 129 bod(y)(ies), 1, 8, 12, 14, 27, 35–37, 39, 40, 46, 47, 51, 68, 71, 91, 92, 108, 113, 115, 116, 118, 120, 121, 128, 131 boundar(y)(ies), 10, 20, 30, 31, 37, 38, 66, 98, 107, 117, 130, 131 between escapism and engagement, 10

between inward and outward, 20, 37, 66 between persons, 117 between myself and others, 30, 98, 130 mental, 31 brain, 12, 45, 116, 118. See also mindbrain problem damage, 27 transplants, 118, 121 tumor, 27, 32 Brink, David O., 127 Camus, Albert, 95 Carnap, Rudolf, 6 certainty, 59, 62, 91, 93 character, 1, 8, 15, 17, 22, 25, 39, 41, 56, 75, 77, 79, 83, 86, 94, 99, 100, 108, 120–123, 131 traits (characteristics), 22, 75, 87, 101, 102, 116, 118, 131 choice(s), 4, 25, 27, 30, 34, 38, 44, 48, 63– 65, 68, 80–82, 86, 98, 101, 127 bad, 84 right, 84 clarity, 63, 80–82, 84, 93, 96 cohesiveness, 37, 40, 41, 44, 45, 49 commitment(s), 8, 15, 22–25, 27, 38, 40, 45, 48, 77, 78, 85, 109, 118, 131 communication, 13, 43, 55, 59, 67, 102, 107, 130 intersubjective, 93 community, 59, 88, 109, 128 idolatrous, 59 religious, 40, 52 comparison(s), 29, 41, 42, 55, 76, 78, 79, 88, 95, 102, 120, 125 complexity, 16, 24, 34, 45, 75, 79, 86– 89, 113 Complex View (Parfit’s), 1, 22–25, 27, 45, 115

140

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

connectedness (physical or psychological), 22, 115, 116, 118–124, 127, 131 consciousness, 3–5, 29, 34, 35, 42, 43, 63, 122, 130. See also selfconsciousness; world-andconsciousness religious, 46 control(s), 14, 16, 30, 72, 79, 80, 84, 98, 110 continuity, 21–28, 30, 31, 38, 40, 42, 45– 47, 53, 54, 57, 61, 69–71, 75, 77–79, 81, 86, 87, 94, 101–104, 108, 113, 116, 119, 123, 126– 128, 130, 131. See also activity(ies); personal identity between early/late Wittgenstein, 62 of body, 116 of character, 5, 22 discontinuity, 46, 47, 116 of personal identity, 20, 22, 24, 26, 27, 36, 40, 46, 115 physical/psychological, 116, 119 of self as subject, 127 of subjectivity, 5 temporal, 27, 30 correction, 102, 109 courage, 54, 84, 127 criminal, 118, 123 deaf man (Husserl’s example), 32, 93, 94, 97, 101 death, 9, 33–35, 40, 55, 59, 60, 71, 109, 110, 117, 120, 125–127 deception, 7, 14, 62 self-deception, 88 depression, 110 Descartes, René, 21, 62, 64, 91–93, 99, 111 desert, 22, 118 desire(s), 16, 24, 34, 35, 53, 55, 76, 78, 80, 83, 84, 95, 103, 106, 110 first and second order, 76 detachment (from oneself), 8, 78, 79, 84, 85, 89, 95 Dickens, Charles, 109 Dickinson, Emily, 12

disengagement, 1, 8, 15, 16, 51, 77, 113 disgust, 14, 110 distribution, 11, 24 distributive justice, 22, 23 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 14, 21, 51 education, 23 Eliot, T. S., 14, 67 Epicureans, 25 equilibrium, 55–57 escapism, 1, 8–11, 15, 21, 36, 39, 51, 71, 72, 113 evaluation, 75–79, 82–86, 88, 89, 99, 105, 108 self-evaluation, 79, 82, 85, 86, 105, 113 evolutionary advantage, 126, 127 experience, 1–131 passim external clues, 101, 102 extremes, 10, 54, 55, 67 family, 7, 11, 13, 15, 45, 55, 70, 87–89, 95, 100, 102, 110, 127, 128 feeling for, 103, 106, 129 feeling with, 105, 107, 109 Frankfurt, Harry G., 76 freedom, 55, 75, 79–82, 85, 86, 88, 113 friendship, 54, 60, 61, 128 Freud, Sigmund, 80, future, 12, 22–24, 28, 34, 46, 88, 123, 125–128 experience, 117, 118, 123, 128, 129 longing for, 32 self, 25, 117, 121, 127–129 undefined, 88 Goncharov, Ivan, 16, 95 growth, personal, 23, 126 of aesthetic sensitivity, 69 Hamlet, 16 Hamlyn, David, 17, 54, 56, 57, 64, 78, 84, 85, 89, 103, 108 Hampshire, Stuart, 19, 20, 41, 62–65, 80–82, 88, 95 hiddenness, 12, 55, 59

Index Hume, David, 33–35, 105–107, 109, 110, 129 Husserl, Edmund, 32, 91, 93, 96, 111 identity, personal, 1, 20–27, 36, 64, 113, 115–121, 123–125, 127– 131. See also continuity ignorance, 84 imbalance, 57, 66. See also balance impingement, 103 incontinence, 83. See also akrásia independence, 18, 51, 82, 89 information, 32, 42, 48, 56, 64, 75, 76, 78, 79, 82–86, 88, 89, 93, 96, 98, 101–104, 107, 109–111 intensity, 29, 31, 32, 35, 66–68, 71, 78, 79, 99, 101–104, 108, 111, 124, 130, 131 intimacy, 1, 35, 61, 69, 87, 91, 101, 104, 105, 107, 111 introspection, 41–43, 46, 48, 49, 63, 64, 75, 78, 81, 88, 125 isolation, 11, 16, 18, 21, 38, 54, 72, 105 James, Henry, 104 Johnston, Mark, 128, 129 Joyce, James, 14, 51 juxtaposition, 1, 55, 64–66, 71–73, 79, 82, 86, 99, 105, 107, 108, 111, 113 Kant, Immanuel, 16, 129 Kekes, John, 76, 83–85 Kierkegaard, Søren, 12, 13, 29, 42, 54– 59, 61–65, 77, 95 language, 101 private, 92, 97, 100 public, 62, 92–95, 97, 98, 111 of successive selves, 117 Lawrence, D. H., 110 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von, 12 Liberation from the Self (Parfit’s concept), 117

141 limit(s)(ations), 1, 8, 15, 20, 22, 24, 31– 34, 36, 39, 40, 42, 46, 47, 52– 54, 56, 57, 59–61, 66, 68, 72, 77–79, 85, 86, 92, 93, 96, 101– 105, 108, 109, 113 anticipation of death as, 35, 40, 47 temporal, 32, 71, 86 limiting case, 1, 22, 24, 85 logical positivist(s), 6 love, 87, 104, 106 of neighbor, fellow, or friend, 61, 99 rel. to power, 57 of self, 61 Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus), 33–35 marriage, 23, 45, 46, 54, 55, 65, 69, 77, 102, 104, 105, 109, 120 mask(s), 7, 11–14, 18, 21, 29, 39, 59, 71, 95 mass production, 11 McDowell, John, 5, 130 memory, 21–24, 27–29, 32, 40, 88, 117, 121–125, 131. See also continuity metaphorical bondage, 33 metaphysics, 5, 6, 29, 37, 43, 127, 128 mind-body problem, 12 mind-brain problem, 12 mixture (of traits), 85, 94, 96, 97, 118 motive(s), 4, 34, 42, 48, 63, 75, 83, 110 motivation, 45, 48, 75, 76, 83–88, 105, 127, 129 Mill, John Stuart, 24 Murdoch, Iris, 62–65, 80–82, 86–88 Muir, John, 15 mutuality, 111 Nagel, Thomas, 12, 13, 29, 30, 43–45, 98, 99, 108 neuroscience, 43, 45 neurosis, 80 Non-Reductionist View, 115–120, 123– 128, 131. See also reductionism vs. Reductionist View, 131

142

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

obedience, 81, 82 objective correlative, 21, 67 objectivity, 15, 48, 64 other(s), 1–131 passim knowledge of, concern for, 1, 54, 72, 91, 92, 97–99, 102, 104, 105, 108, 110, 111, 113 separateness of, 11, 13, 28, 29, 35, 100, 101 relationships with, 17, 60, 77, 98, 99, 110 Parfit, Derek, 6, 22–28, 30, 43–45, 115–131 passivity, 25, 27, 121, 122, 124 passion, 58, 59, 73, 83, 84 perception(s), 5, 12, 26, 35, 40, 42, 55, 69, 88, 92, 95, 105, 125, 130 sense-perception, 26, 92 perspective, 4, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 27, 41, 47, 52–54, 56, 57, 60, 66, 67, 69, 71, 75, 76, 78, 79, 82, 88, 103, 104, 109, 118, 120, 130 philosopher(s), 3, 43, 54, 57, 58, 61, 65, 79, 87 categorized by view of inwardness, 64, 75 Christian, 64 of twentieth century, 62 Piaget, Jean, 54–57 Plato, 23–25, 84 Platonist, 4 precedence, 62, 91, 92, 98 presence, 7, 24, 27, 46, 47, 53, 68–71, 75, 78, 94, 103, 104, 105, 107 actual vs. thought of, 60 to self (see self-presence) primal state, 16 privacy, 1, 6, 18–23, 28–31, 33–40, 42– 44, 47–49, 51, 52, 54, 56, 59, 60, 62, 71, 85, 94, 97, 111, 113 promise(s), 22, 23, 25, 27, 48, 70, 73, 122, 123 proportion(s), 12, 32, 51–58, 61, 63–66, 71, 73, 75, 99, 115, 118, 122. See also balance Proust, Marcel, 121, 122 psychoanalysis, 80 public realm, 62, 93, 94

affairs, 10 figures, 102 health, 9 language, 62, 92, 94, 97, 98, 111 life, 19 policy, 9, 119 public service announcement, 94 punishment, 118, 123 reciprocity, 1, 65–73, 82, 100, 111, 113 reductionism, 3, 6, 115, 117, 118, 124, 126, 128, 130. See also NonReductionist View; Reductionist View non-reductionism, 128 Reductionist View, 115–118, 120, 123– 126, 129, 131 reference(s), 10 to concept of good life, 84 to consciousness of self, 43 to context, 75 to inwardness, 64, 113 to others, 62, 75, 93 reference points, 53, 69, 99, 101 self-reference, 42, 47 to sense of agency, 68 to subjectivity, 68 reflexiveness, 31, 41, 46–49, 60, 63, 64, 78, 81, 100, 113 regard, loving, 64, 65, 81, 82, 88 relief, 7, 33, 40, 56, 57, 66, 71 religion, 11, 15, 45–48, 88 reserve, 13, 39, 77, 85, 101. See also solitariness rest state, 17 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 67, 71 role(s), 7, 71, 87 functional, 127 of inwardness, 1, 18,79, 88, 89, 105 of knowledge of others and sympathy, 108 of subject/object, 26, 27 of reciprocity bet. inward/outward, 69, 75, 86 of self-knowledge in self-evaluation, 76, 77 Russell, Bertrand, 26

Index satisfaction(s), 33, 69–72, 76, 104, 109 Sartre, Jean Paul, 3–6, 38, 43, 44, 60, 62–65, 70, 82, 95, 96 science fiction, 118, 121, 131 scope, 39, 60, 73, 108, 117 secrecy, 12, 13 self-concern, 127–130 self-consciousness, 41–43, 46–49, 63 (see also consciousness; worldand-consciousness) self-deception, 88 self-evaluation, 77, 79, 82, 83, 85, 105, 113 selfishness, 120 self-knowledge, 1, 17, 41, 54, 72, 73, 75–80, 82–86, 88, 89, 92, 93, 95, 97–99, 102, 104, 105, 109, 111, 113 self-presence, 61, 78, 79, 85, 88, 89, 95, 96, 102, 103, 113. See also presence self-reference, 42, 47 self-restraint, 69, 104 selves, successive, 27, 117 sensation(s), bodily, 1, 4, 9, 10, 17, 20, 35–37, 39, 40, 42, 47, 53, 54, 57, 61, 68, 71, 75, 77–79, 92, 95, 96, 102, 103, 108–110, 113 sense-perception, 26, 92 sensitivity to experience(s), 27 aesthetic, 69 sensory experience(s), 26, 67, 94, 96, 97 sensory atoms, 26 separateness, 1, 3, 6–9, 11–21, 28, 29, 35–43, 46–49, 51, 54, 57, 59, 61–63, 65, 70–72, 75, 77–79, 81, 82, 85, 86, 88, 94, 97, 101– 103, 105, 108, 111, 113, 127 Simple View (Parfit’s concept), 22, 24, 25, 115 simplification(s), 87, 125 Shoemaker, Sydney, 127 sloth, 83, 86. See also akrásia

143 solitariness, 1, 8, 11–13, 15, 21, 36, 77, 113. See also reserve solitude, 11, 46, 47, 52, 78, 101 spatial metaphor(s), 17, 37, 57, 67 spontaneity, 85, 100 Socrates, 23, 84, 85 Stoics, 25 subjectivity, 1, 4, 5, 20, 21, 28, 29, 36, 40–42, 53, 54, 56, 58, 61–63, 68–71, 75, 77–79, 81, 85, 94– 97, 102–104, 107–109, 113, 119, 124, 125, 130, 131 surgery, 121, 124 symmetry, 37 sympathy, 1, 33, 54, 73, 91, 105–111, 113, 120, 130 Taylor, Charles, 15, 61, 76, 77, 83 Telescopic Philanthropy, 109 teletransportation, 118, 124, 126 thought(s), 1, 5, 7, 11, 17–20, 22, 23, 26, 28, 29, 31, 34–37, 39, 41, 43–46, 52–54, 57, 60, 63, 64, 68, 72, 75, 81, 82, 85, 88, 91, 92, 94, 103, 107–109, 111, 118, 123–125, 129–131 thought experiments, 26, 118, 125, 131 Tolstoy, Leo, 87 Unamuno, Miguel de, 34 unity, 43–46, 48, 49, 61, 77–79, 84, 86, 96, 102, 103, 113, 117, 119, 123, 124 of agent, 39, 48, 49 anatomical, 45 of common direction for attention, 40 of consciousness, 3, 43 disunity, 117 of inwardness, 39, 44 moral, 45 of separateness and privacy, 39 of subject, 39, 44, 49, 113 unity reaction (Blackburn’s concept), 129

144

INWARDNESS AND MORALITY

variety, 1, 39, 56, 66, 71, 86, 87, 113 verification, 88 victimhood, 30 virtuous mean, 54. See also balance web of connections among forms, 28, 43, 44, 47 web of experiences, 40

Williams, Bernard, 34, 35 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 6, 17, 26, 29, 62, 64, 91, 92, 93, 97, 111 world, the, 1–100 passim, 111, 113, 128, 130 world-and-consciousness, 4. See also consciousness; self-consciousness

VIBS The Value Inquiry Book Series is co-sponsored by: Adler School of Professional Psychology American Indian Philosophy Association American Maritain Association American Society for Value Inquiry Association for Process Philosophy of Education Canadian Society for Philosophical Practice Center for Bioethics, University of Turku Center for Professional and Applied Ethics, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Central European Pragmatist Forum Centre for Applied Ethics, Hong Kong Baptist University Centre for Cultural Research, Aarhus University Centre for Professional Ethics, University of Central Lancashire Centre for the Study of Philosophy and Religion, University College of Cape Breton Centro de Estudos em Filosofia Americana, Brazil College of Education and Allied Professions, Bowling Green State University College of Liberal Arts, Rochester Institute of Technology Concerned Philosophers for Peace Conference of Philosophical Societies Department of Moral and Social Philosophy, University of Helsinki Gannon University Gilson Society Haitian Studies Association Ikeda University Institute of Philosophy of the High Council of Scientific Research, Spain International Academy of Philosophy of the Principality of Liechtenstein International Association of Bioethics International Center for the Arts, Humanities, and Value Inquiry International Society for Universal Dialogue Natural Law Society Philosophical Society of Finland Philosophy Born of Struggle Association Philosophy Seminar, University of Mainz Pragmatism Archive at The Oklahoma State University R.S. Hartman Institute for Formal and Applied Axiology Research Institute, Lakeridge Health Corporation Russian Philosophical Society Society for Iberian and Latin-American Thought Society for the Philosophic Study of Genocide and the Holocaust Unit for Research in Cognitive Neuroscience, Autonomous University of Barcelona Yves R. Simon Institute

Titles Published 1.

Noel Balzer, The Human Being as a Logical Thinker

2.

Archie J. Bahm, Axiology: The Science of Values

3.

H. P. P. (Hennie) Lötter, Justice for an Unjust Society

4. H. G. Callaway, Context for Meaning and Analysis: A Critical Study in the Philosophy of Language 5.

Benjamin S. Llamzon, A Humane Case for Moral Intuition

6. James R. Watson, Between Auschwitz and Tradition: Postmodern Reflections on the Task of Thinking. A volume in Holocaust and Genocide Studies 7. Robert S. Hartman, Freedom to Live: The Robert Hartman Story, Edited by Arthur R. Ellis. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies 8.

Archie J. Bahm, Ethics: The Science of Oughtness

9. George David Miller, An Idiosyncratic Ethics; Or, the Lauramachean Ethics 10.

Joseph P. DeMarco, A Coherence Theory in Ethics

11. Frank G. Forrest, Valuemetrics‫א‬: The Science of Personal and Professional Ethics. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies 12. William Gerber, The Meaning of Life: Insights of the World’s Great Thinkers 13. Richard T. Hull, Editor, A Quarter Century of Value Inquiry: Presidential Addresses of the American Society for Value Inquiry. A volume in Histories and Addresses of Philosophical Societies 14. William Gerber, Nuggets of Wisdom from Great Jewish Thinkers: From Biblical Times to the Present

15.

Sidney Axinn, The Logic of Hope: Extensions of Kant’s View of Religion

16.

Messay Kebede, Meaning and Development

17. Amihud Gilead, The Platonic Odyssey: A Philosophical-Literary Inquiry into the Phaedo 18. Necip Fikri Alican, Mill’s Principle of Utility: A Defense of John Stuart Mill’s Notorious Proof. A volume in Universal Justice 19.

Michael H. Mitias, Editor, Philosophy and Architecture.

20. Roger T. Simonds, Rational Individualism: The Perennial Philosophy of Legal Interpretation. A volume in Natural Law Studies 21.

William Pencak, The Conflict of Law and Justice in the Icelandic Sagas

22. Samuel M. Natale and Brian M. Rothschild, Editors, Values, Work, Education: The Meanings of Work 23. N. Georgopoulos and Michael Heim, Editors, Being Human in the Ultimate: Studies in the Thought of John M. Anderson 24. Robert Wesson and Patricia A. Williams, Editors, Evolution and Human Values 25. Wim J. van der Steen, Facts, Values, and Methodology: A New Approach to Ethics 26.

Avi Sagi and Daniel Statman, Religion and Morality

27. Albert William Levi, The High Road of Humanity: The Seven Ethical Ages of Western Man, Edited by Donald Phillip Verene and Molly Black Verene 28. Samuel M. Natale and Brian M. Rothschild, Editors, Work Values: Education, Organization, and Religious Concerns 29. Laurence F. Bove and Laura Duhan Kaplan, Editors, From the Eye of the Storm: Regional Conflicts and the Philosophy of Peace. A volume in Philosophy of Peace 30.

Robin Attfield, Value, Obligation, and Meta-Ethics

31. William Gerber, The Deepest Questions You Can Ask About God: As Answered by the World’s Great Thinkers 32.

Daniel Statman, Moral Dilemmas

33. Rem B. Edwards, Editor, Formal Axiology and Its Critics. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies 34. George David Miller and Conrad P. Pritscher, On Education and Values: In Praise of Pariahs and Nomads. A volume in Philosophy of Education 35.

Paul S. Penner, Altruistic Behavior: An Inquiry into Motivation

36.

Corbin Fowler, Morality for Moderns

37. Giambattista Vico, The Art of Rhetoric (Institutiones Oratoriae, 1711– 1741), from the definitive Latin text and notes, Italian commentary and introduction byGiuliano Crifò.Translated and Edited by Giorgio A. Pinton and Arthur W. Shippee. A volume in Values in Italian Philosophy 38. W. H. Werkmeister, Martin Heidegger on the Way. Edited by Richard T. Hull. A volume in Werkmeister Studies 39.

Phillip Stambovsky, Myth and the Limits of Reason

40. Samantha Brennan, Tracy Isaacs, and Michael Milde, Editors, A Question of Values: New Canadian Perspectives in Ethics and Political Philosophy 41. Peter A. Redpath, Cartesian Nightmare: An Introduction to Transcendental Sophistry. A volume in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy 42. Clark Butler, History as the Story of Freedom: Philosophy in InterculturalContext, with responses by sixteen scholars 43.

Dennis Rohatyn, Philosophy History Sophistry

44. Leon Shaskolsky Sheleff, Social Cohesion and Legal Coercion: A Critique of Weber, Durkheim, and Marx. Afterword by Virginia Black

45. Alan Soble, Editor, Sex, Love, and Friendship: Studies of the Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love, 1977–1992. A volume in Histories and Addresses of Philosophical Societies 46. Peter A. Redpath, Wisdom’s Odyssey: From Philosophy to Transcendental Sophistry. A volume in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy 47. Albert A. Anderson, Universal Justice: A Dialectical Approach. A volume in Universal Justice 48. Pio Colonnello, The Philosophy of José Gaos. Translated from Italian by Peter Cocozzella. Edited by Myra Moss. Introduction by Giovanni Gullace. A volume in Values in Italian Philosophy 49. Laura Duhan Kaplan and Laurence F. Bove, Editors, Philosophical Perspectives on Power and Domination: Theories and Practices. A volume in Philosophy of Peace 50.

Gregory F. Mellema, Collective Responsibility

51. Josef Seifert, What Is Life? The Originality, Irreducibility, and Value of Life. A volume in Central-European Value Studies 52.

William Gerber, Anatomy of What We Value Most

53. Armando Molina, Our Ways: Values and Character, Edited by Rem B. Edwards. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies 54. Kathleen J. Wininger, Nietzsche’s Reclamation of Philosophy. A volume in Central-European Value Studies 55.

Thomas Magnell, Editor, Explorations of Value

56. HPP (Hennie) Lötter, Injustice, Violence, and Peace: The Case of South Africa. A volume in Philosophy of Peace 57. Lennart Nordenfelt, Talking About Health: A Philosophical Dialogue. A volume in Nordic Value Studies 58. Jon Mills and Janusz A. Polanowski, The Ontology of Prejudice. A volume in Philosophy and Psychology

59.

Leena Vilkka, The Intrinsic Value of Nature

60. Palmer Talbutt, Jr., Rough Dialectics: Sorokin’s Philosophy of Value, with contributions by Lawrence T. Nichols and Pitirim A. Sorokin 61.

C. L. Sheng, A Utilitarian General Theory of Value

62. George David Miller, Negotiating Toward Truth: The Extinction of Teachers and Students. Epilogue by Mark Roelof Eleveld. A volume in Philosophy of Education 63. William Gerber, Love, Poetry, and Immortality: Luminous Insights of the World’s Great Thinkers 64. Dane R. Gordon, Editor, Philosophy in Post-Communist Europe. A volume in Post-Communist European Thought 65. Dane R. Gordon and Józef Niznik, Editors, Criticism and Defense of Rationality in Contemporary Philosophy. A volume in Post-Communist European Thought 66. John R. Shook, Pragmatism: An Annotated Bibliography, 1898-1940. With contributions by E. Paul Colella, Lesley Friedman, Frank X. Ryan, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis 67.

Lansana Keita, The Human Project and the Temptations of Science

68. Michael M. Kazanjian, Phenomenology and Education: Cosmology, CoBeing, and Core Curriculum. A volume in Philosophy of Education 69. James W. Vice, The Reopening of the American Mind: On Skepticism and Constitutionalism 70. Sarah Bishop Merrill, Defining Personhood: Toward the Ethics of Quality in Clinical Care 71.

Dane R. Gordon, Philosophy and Vision

72. Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg, Editors, Postmodernism and the Holocaust. A volume in Holocaust and Genocide Studies

73. Peter A. Redpath, Masquerade of the Dream Walkers: Prophetic Theology from the Cartesians to Hegel. A volume in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy 74. Malcolm D. Evans, Whitehead and Philosophy of Education: The Seamless Coat of Learning. A volume in Philosophy of Education 75. Warren E. Steinkraus, Taking Religious Claims Seriously: A Philosophy of Religion, Edited by Michael H. Mitias. A volume in Universal Justice 76.

Thomas Magnell, Editor, Values and Education

77. Kenneth A. Bryson, Persons and Immortality. A volume in Natural Law Studies 78. Steven V. Hicks, International Law and the Possibility of a Just World Order: An Essay on Hegel’s Universalism. A volume in Universal Justice 79. E. F. Kaelin, Texts on Texts and Textuality: A Phenomenology of Literary Art, Edited by Ellen J. Burns 80. Amihud Gilead, Saving Possibilities: A Study in Philosophical Psychology. A volume in Philosophy and Psychology 81. André Mineau, The Making of the Holocaust: Ideology and Ethics in the Systems Perspective. A volume in Holocaust and Genocide Studies 82. Howard P. Kainz, Politically Incorrect Dialogues: Topics Not Discussed in Polite Circles 83. Veikko Launis, Juhani Pietarinen, and Juha Räikkä, Editors, Genes and Morality: New Essays. A volume in Nordic Value Studies 84. Steven Schroeder, The Metaphysics of Cooperation: A Study of F. D. Maurice 85. Caroline Joan (“Kay”) S. Picart, Thomas Mann and Friedrich Nietzsche: Eroticism, Death, Music, and Laughter. A volume in Central-European Value Studies

86. G. John M. Abbarno, Editor, The Ethics of Homelessness: Philosophical Perspectives 87. James Giles, Editor, French Existentialism: Consciousness, Ethics, and Relations with Others. A volume in Nordic Value Studies 88. Deane Curtin and Robert Litke, Editors, Institutional Violence. A volume in Philosophy of Peace 89.

Yuval Lurie, Cultural Beings: Reading the Philosophers of Genesis

90. Sandra A. Wawrytko, Editor, The Problem of Evil: An Intercultural Exploration. A volume in Philosophy and Psychology 91. Gary J. Acquaviva, Values, Violence, and Our Future. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies 92.

Michael R. Rhodes, Coercion: A Nonevaluative Approach

93. Jacques Kriel, Matter, Mind, and Medicine: Transforming the Clinical Method 94. Haim Gordon, Dwelling Poetically: Educational Challenges in Heidegger’s Thinking on Poetry. A volume in Philosophy of Education 95. Ludwig Grünberg, The Mystery of Values: Studies in Axiology, Edited by Cornelia Grünberg and Laura Grünberg 96. Gerhold K. Becker, Editor, The Moral Status of Persons: Perspectives on Bioethics. A volume in Studies in Applied Ethics 97. Roxanne Claire Farrar, Sartrean Dialectics: A Method for Critical Discourse on Aesthetic Experience 98. Ugo Spirito, Memoirs of the Twentieth Century. Translated from Italian and Edited by Anthony G. Costantini. A volume in Values in Italian Philosophy 99. Steven Schroeder, Between Freedom and Necessity: An Essay on the Place of Value

100. Foster N. Walker, Enjoyment and the Activity of Mind: Dialogues on Whitehead and Education. A volume in Philosophy of Education 101. Avi Sagi, Kierkegaard, Religion, and Existence: The Voyage of the Self. Translated from Hebrew by Batya Stein 102. Bennie R. Crockett, Jr., Editor, Addresses of the Mississippi Philosophical Association. A volume in Histories and Addresses of Philosophical Societies 103. Paul van Dijk, Anthropology in the Age of Technology: The Philosophical Contribution of Günther Anders 104. Giambattista Vico, Universal Right. Translated from Latin and edited by Giorgio Pinton and Margaret Diehl. A volume in Values in Italian Philosophy 105. Judith Presler and Sally J. Scholz, Editors, Peacemaking: Lessons from the Past, Visions for the Future. A volume in Philosophy of Peace 106. Dennis Bonnette, Origin of the Human Species. A volume in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy 107. Phyllis Chiasson, Peirce’s Pragmatism: The Design for Thinking. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 108. Dan Stone, Editor, Theoretical Interpretations of the Holocaust. A volume in Holocaust and Genocide Studies 109. Raymond Angelo Belliotti, What Is the Meaning of Human Life? 110. Lennart Nordenfelt, Health, Science, and Ordinary Language, with Contributions by George Khushf and K. W. M. Fulford 111. Daryl Koehn, Local Insights, Global Ethics for Business. A volume in Studies in Applied Ethics 112. Matti Häyry and Tuija Takala, Editors, The Future of Value Inquiry. A volume in Nordic Value Studies

113.

Conrad P. Pritscher, Quantum Learning: Beyond Duality

114. Thomas M. Dicken and Rem B. Edwards, Dialogues on Values and Centers of Value: Old Friends, New Thoughts. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies 115. Rem B. Edwards, What Caused the Big Bang? A volume in Philosophy and Religion 116. Jon Mills, Editor, A Pedagogy of Becoming. A volume in Philosophy of Education 117. Robert T. Radford, Cicero: A Study in the Origins of Republican Philosophy. A volume in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy 118. Arleen L. F. Salles and María Julia Bertomeu, Editors, Bioethics: Latin American Perspectives. A volume in Philosophy in Latin America 119. Nicola Abbagnano, The Human Project: The Year 2000, with an Interview by Guiseppe Grieco. Translated from Italian by Bruno Martini and Nino Langiulli. Edited with an introduction by Nino Langiulli. A volume in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy 120. Daniel M. Haybron, Editor, Earth’s Abominations: Philosophical Studies of Evil. A volume in Personalist Studies 121. Anna T. Challenger, Philosophy and Art in Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub: A Modern Sufi Odyssey 122. George David Miller, Peace, Value, and Wisdom: The Educational Philosophy of Daisaku Ikeda. A volume in Daisaku Ikeda Studies 123. Haim Gordon and Rivca Gordon, Sophistry and Twentieth-Century Art 124. Thomas O. Buford and Harold H. Oliver, Editors Personalism Revisited: Its Proponents and Critics. A volume in Histories and Addresses of Philosophical Societies 125. Avi Sagi, Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd. Translated from Hebrew by Batya Stein 126. Robert S. Hartman, The Knowledge of Good: Critique of Axiological Reason. Expanded translation from the Spanish by Robert S. Hartman. Edited by Arthur R. Ellis and Rem B. Edwards.A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies

127. Alison Bailey and Paula J. Smithka, Editors. Community, Diversity, and Difference: Implications for Peace. A volume in Philosophy of Peace 128. Oscar Vilarroya, The Dissolution of Mind: A Fable of How Experience Gives Rise to Cognition. A volume in Cognitive Science 129. Paul Custodio Bube and Jeffery Geller, Editors, Conversations with Pragmatism: A Multi-Disciplinary Study. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 130. Richard Rumana, Richard Rorty: An Annotated Bibliography of Secondary Literature. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 131. Stephen Schneck, Editor, Max Scheler’s Acting Persons: New Perspectives A volume in Personalist Studies 132. Michael Kazanjian, Learning Values Lifelong: From Inert Ideas to Wholes. A volume in Philosophy of Education 133. Rudolph Alexander Kofi Cain, Alain Leroy Locke: Race, Culture, and the Education of African American Adults. A volume in African American Philosophy 134. Werner Krieglstein, Compassion: A New Philosophy of the Other 135. Robert N. Fisher, Daniel T. Primozic, Peter A. Day, and Joel A. Thompson, Editors, Suffering, Death, and Identity. A volume in Personalist Studies 136. Steven Schroeder, Touching Philosophy, Sounding Religion, Placing Education. A volume in Philosophy of Education 137. Guy DeBrock, Process Pragmatism: Essays on a Quiet Philosophical Revolution. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 138. Lennart Nordenfelt and Per-Erik Liss, Editors, Dimensions of Health and Health Promotion 139. Amihud Gilead, Singularity and Other Possibilities: Panenmentalist Novelties

140. Samantha Mei-che Pang, Nursing Ethics in Modern China: Conflicting Values and Competing Role Requirements. A volume in Studies in Applied Ethics 141. Christine M. Koggel, Allannah Furlong, and Charles Levin, Editors, Confidential Relationships: Psychoanalytic, Ethical, and Legal Contexts. A volume in Philosophy and Psychology 142. Peter A. Redpath, Editor, A Thomistic Tapestry: Essays in Memory of Étienne Gilson. A volume in Gilson Studies 143. Deane-Peter Baker and Patrick Maxwell, Editors, Explorations in Contemporary Continental Philosophy of Religion. A volume in Philosophy and Religion 144. Matti Häyry and Tuija Takala, Editors, Scratching the Surface of Bioethics. A volume in Values in Bioethics 145. Leonidas Donskis, Forms of Hatred: The Troubled Imagination in Modern Philosophy and Literature 146. Andreea Deciu Ritivoi, Editor, Interpretation and Its Objects: Studies in the Philosophy of Michael Krausz 147. Herman Stark, A Fierce Little Tragedy: Thought, Passion, and SelfFormation in the Philosophy Classroom. A volume in Philosophy of Education 148. William Gay and Tatiana Alekseeva, Editors, Democracy and the Quest for Justice: Russian and American Perspectives. A volume in Contemporary Russian Philosophy 149. Xunwu Chen, Being and Authenticity 150. Hugh P. McDonald, Radical Axiology: A First Philosophy of Values 151. Dane R. Gordon and David C. Durst, Editors, Civil Society in Southeast Europe. A volume in Post-Communist European Thought 152. John Ryder and Emil Višňovský, Editors, Pragmatism and Values: The Central European Pragmatist Forum, Volume One. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values

153. Messay Kebede, Africa’s Quest for a Philosophy of Decolonization 154. Steven M. Rosen, Dimensions of Apeiron: A Topological Phenomenology of Space, Time, and Individuation. A volume in Philosophy and Psychology 155. Albert A. Anderson, Steven V. Hicks, and Lech Witkowski, Editors, Mythos and Logos: How to Regain the Love of Wisdom. A volume in Universal Justice 156. John Ryder and Krystyna Wilkoszewska, Editors, Deconstruction and Reconstruction: The Central European Pragmatist Forum, Volume Two. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 157. Javier Muguerza, Ethics and Perplexity: Toward a Critique of Dialogical Reason. Translated from the Spanish by Jody L. Doran. Edited by John R. Welch. A volume in Philosophy in Spain 158. Gregory F. Mellema, The Expectations of Morality 159. Robert Ginsberg, The Aesthetics of Ruins 160. Stan van Hooft, Life, Death, and Subjectivity: Moral Sources in Bioethics A volume in Values in Bioethics 161. André Mineau, Operation Barbarossa: Ideology and Ethics Against Human Dignity 162. Arthur Efron, Expriencing Tess of the D’Urbervilles: A Deweyan Account. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 163. Reyes Mate, Memory of the West: The Contemporaneity of Forgotten Jewish Thinkers. Translated from the Spanish by Anne Day Dewey. Edited by John R. Welch. A volume in Philosophy in Spain 164. Nancy Nyquist Potter, Editor, Putting Peace into Practice: Evaluating Policy on Local and Global Levels. A volume in Philosophy of Peace 165. Matti Häyry, Tuija Takala, and Peter Herissone-Kelly, Editors, Bioethics and Social Reality. A volume in Values in Bioethics 166. Maureen Sie, Justifying Blame: Why Free Will Matters and Why it Does Not. A volume in Studies in Applied Ethics

167. Leszek Koczanowicz and Beth J. Singer, Editors, Democracy and the Post-Totalitarian Experience. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 168. Michael W. Riley, Plato’s Cratylus: Argument, Form, and Structure. A volume in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy 169. Leon Pomeroy, The New Science of Axiological Psychology. Edited by Rem B. Edwards. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies 170. Eric Wolf Fried, Inwardness and Morality